by E. F. Benson
Hardly had they gone when Elizabeth, having solved the crossword except No. 3 down, which continued to baffle her, set about solving the mystery which, her trained sense assured her, existed, and she rang up Mallards Cottage with the intention of congratulating Georgie on being better, and of proposing to come in and read to him. Georgie’s cook, who was going on holiday next day and had been bidden to give nothing away, answered the call. The personal pronouns in this conversation were rather mixed as in the correspondences between Queen Victoria and her Ministers of State.
‘Could Mrs Mapp-Flint speak to Mr Pillson?’
‘No, ma’am, she couldn’t. Impossible just now.’
‘Is Mrs Mapp-Flint speaking to Foljambe?’
‘No, ma’am, it’s me. Foljambe is out.’
‘Mrs Mapp-Flint will call on Mr Pillson about 4.30.’
‘Very good, ma’am, but I’m afraid Mr Pillson won’t be able to see her.’
The royal use of the third person was not producing much effect, so Elizabeth changed her tactics, and became a commoner. She was usually an adept at worming news out of cooks and parlourmaids.
‘Oh, I recognize your voice, Cook,’ she said effusively. ‘Good afternoon. No anxiety, I hope, about dear Mr Georgie?’
‘No, ma’am, not that I’m aware of.’
‘I suppose he’s having a little nap after his lunch.’
‘I couldn’t say, ma’am.’
‘Perhaps you’d be so very kind as just to peep, oh, so quietly, into his sitting-room and give him my message, if he’s not asleep.’
‘He’s not in his sitting-room, ma’am.’
Elizabeth rang off. She was more convinced than ever that some mystery was afoot, and her curiosity passed from tender oozings to acute inflammation. Her visit at 4.30 brought her no nearer the solution, for Georgie’s substantial cook blocked the doorway, and said he was at home to nobody. Benjy on his way back from golf met with no better luck, nor did Diva on her way to evening church. All these kind inquiries were telephoned to Georgie at Grebe: Tilling was evidently beginning to seethe, and it must continue to do so.
Lucia’s household had been sworn to secrecy, and the two passed a very pleasant evening. They had a grand duet on the piano, and discussed the amazing romance of Dame Catherine Winterglass who had become enshrined in Lucia’s mind as a shining example of a conscientious woman of middle-age determined to make the world a better place.
‘Really, Georgie,’ she said, ‘I’m ashamed of having spent so many years getting gradually a little richer without being a proper steward of my money. Money is a power, and I have been letting it lie idle, instead of increasing it by leaps and bounds like that wonderful Dame Catherine. Think of the good she did!’
‘You might decrease it by leaps and bounds if you mean to speculate,’ observed Georgie. ‘It’s supposed to be the quickest short cut to the workhouse, isn’t it?’
‘Speculation?’ said Lucia. ‘I abhor it. What I mean is studying the markets, working at finance as I work at Aristophanes, using one’s brains, going carefully into all those prospectuses that are sent one. For instance, yesterday there was a strong recommendation in the evening paper to buy shares in a West African mine called Siriami, and this morning the City Editor of a Sunday paper gave the same advice. I collate those facts, Georgie. I reason that there are two very shrewd men recommending the same thing. Naturally I shall be very cautious at first, till I know the ropes, so to speak, and shall rely largely on my broker’s advice. But I shall telegraph to him first thing to-morrow to buy me five hundred Siriami. Say they go up only a shilling – I’ve worked it all out – I shall be twenty-five pounds to the good.’
‘My dear, how beautiful!’ said Georgie. ‘What will you do with it all?’
‘Put it into something else, or put more into Siriami. Dame Catherine used to say that an intelligent and hard-working woman can make money every day of her life. She was often a bear. I must find out about being a bear.’
‘I know what that means,’ said Georgie. ‘You sell shares you haven’t got in order to buy them cheaper afterwards.’
Lucia looked startled.
‘Are you sure about that? I must tell my broker to be certain that the man he buys my Siriami shares from has got them. I shall insist on that: no dealings with bears.’
Georgie regarded his needlework. It was a French design for a chair-back: a slim shepherdess in a green dress was standing among her sheep. The sheep were quite unmistakable but she insisted on looking like a stick of asparagus. He stroked the side of his beard which was unaffected by shingles.
‘Tarsome of her,’ he said. ‘I must give her a hat or rip her clothes off and make her pink.’
‘And if they went up two shillings I should make fifty pounds,’ said Lucia absently.
‘Oh, those shares: how marvellous!’ said Georgie. ‘But isn’t there the risk of their going down instead?’
‘My dear, the whole of life is a series of risks,’ said Lucia sententiously.
‘Yes, but why increase them? I like to be comfortable, but as long as I have all I want, I don’t want anything more. Of course I hope you’ll make tons of money, but I can’t think what you’ll do with it.’
‘Aspett’un po,’ Georgino,’ said she. ‘Why it’s half-past ten. The invalid must go to bed.’
‘Half-past ten: is it really?’ said Georgie. ‘Why, I’ve been going to bed at nine, because I was so bored with myself.’
Next morning Tilling seethed furiously. Georgie’s cook had left before the world was a-stir, and Elizabeth, setting out with her basket about half-past ten to do her marketing in the High Street, observed that the red blinds in his sitting-room were still down. That was very odd: Foljambe was usually there at eight, but evidently she had not come yet: possibly she was ill, too. That distressing (but interesting) doubt was soon set at rest, for there was Foljambe in the High Street looking very well. Something might be found out from her, and Elizabeth put on her most seductive smile.
‘Good morning, Foljambe,’ she said. ‘And how is poor Mr Georgie to-day?’
Foljambe’s face grew stony, as if she had seen the Gorgon.
‘Getting on nicely, ma’am,’ she said.
‘Oh, so glad! I was almost afraid you were ill, too, as his sitting-room blinds were down.’
‘Indeed, ma’am,’ said Foljambe, getting even more flintily petrified.
‘And will you tell him I shall ring him up soon to see if he’d like me to look in?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Foljambe.
Elizabeth watched her go along the street, and noticed she did not turn up in the direction of Mallards Cottage, but kept straight on. Very mysterious: where could she be going? Elizabeth thought of following her, but her attention was diverted by seeing Diva pop out of the hairdresser’s establishment in that scarlet beret and frock which made her look so like a round pillar-box. She had taken the plunge at last after tortures of indecision, and had had her hair cropped quite close. The right and scathing thing to do, thought Elizabeth, was to seem not to notice any change in her appearance.
‘Such a lovely morning, isn’t it, dear Diva, for January,’ she said. ‘Si doux. Any news?’
Diva felt there was enough news on her own head to satisfy anybody for one morning, and she wheeled so that Elizabeth should get a back view of it, where the change was most remarkable. ‘I’ve heard none,’ she said. ‘Oh, there’s Major Benjy. Going to catch the tram, I suppose.’
It was Elizabeth’s turn to wheel. There had been a coolness this morning, for he had come down very late to breakfast, and had ordered fresh tea and bacon with a grumpy air. She would punish him by being unaware of him … Then that wouldn’t do, because gossipy Diva would tell everybody they had had a quarrel, and back she wheeled again.
‘Quick, Benjy-boy,’ she called out to him, ‘or you’ll miss the tram. Play beautifully, darling. All those lovely mashies.’
Lucia’s motor drew up close to them opposite
the post-office. She had a telegraph form in her hand, and dropped it as she got out. It bowed and fluttered in the breeze, and fell at Elizabeth’s feet. Her glance at it, as she picked it up, revealing the cryptic sentence: ‘Buy five hundred Siriami shares,’ was involuntary or nearly so.
‘Here you are, dear,’ she said. ‘En route to see poor Mr Georgie?’
Lucia’s eye fell on Diva’s cropped head.
‘Dear Diva, I like it immensely!’ she said. ‘Ten years younger.’
Elizabeth remained profoundly unconscious.
‘Well, I must be trotting,’ she said. ‘Such a lot of commissions for my Benjy. So like a man, bless him, to go off and play golf, leaving wifie to do all his jobs. Such a scolding I shall get if I forget any.’
She plunged into the grocer’s, and for the next half-hour, the ladies of Tilling, popping in and out of shops, kept meeting on doorsteps with small collision of their baskets, and hurried glances at their contents. Susan Wyse alone did not take part in this ladies’ chain, but remained in the Royce, and butcher and baker and greengrocer and fishmonger had to come out and take her orders through the window. Elizabeth felt bitterly about this, for, in view of the traffic, which would otherwise have become congested, tradesmen ran out of their shops, leaving other customers to wait, so that Susan’s Royce might not be delayed. Elizabeth had addressed a formal complaint about it to the Town Council, and that conscientious body sent a reliable timekeeper in plain clothes down to the High Street on three consecutive mornings, to ascertain how long, on the average, Mrs Wyse’s car stopped at each shop. As the period worked out at a trifle over twenty seconds they took the view that as the road was made for vehicular traffic, she was making a legitimate use of it. She could hardly be expected to send the Royce to the parking place by the Town Hall each time she stopped, for it would not nearly have got there by the time she was ready for it again. The rest of the ladies, not being so busy as Elizabeth, did not mind these delays, for Susan made such sumptuous orders that it gave you an appetite to hear them: she had been known, even when she and Algernon had been quite alone, to command a hen lobster, a pheasant, and a pâté de foie gras …
Elizabeth soon finished her shopping (Benjy-boy had only asked her to order him some shaving-soap), and just as she reached her door, she was astonished to see Diva coming rapidly towards her house from the direction of Mallards Cottage, thirty yards away, and making signs to her. After the severity with which she had ignored the Eton crop, it was clear that Diva must have something to say which overscored her natural resentment.
‘The most extraordinary thing,’ panted Diva as she got close, ‘Mr Georgie’s blinds –’
‘Oh, is his sitting-room blind still down?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘I saw that an hour ago, but forgot to tell you. Is that all, dear?’
‘Nowhere near,’ said Diva. ‘All his blinds are down. Perhaps you saw that too, but I don’t believe you did.’
Elizabeth was far too violently interested to pretend she had, and the two hurried up the street and contemplated the front of Mallards Cottage. It was true. The blinds of his dining-room, of the small room by the door, of Georgie’s bedroom, of the cook’s bedroom, were all drawn.
‘And there’s no smoke coming out of the chimneys,’ said Diva in an awed whisper. ‘Can he be dead?’
‘Do not rush to such dreadful conclusions,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Come back to Mallards and let’s talk it over.’
But the more they talked, the less they could construct any theory to fit the facts. Lucia had been very cheerful, Foljambe had said that Georgie was going on nicely, and even the two most ingenious women in Tilling could not reconcile this with the darkened and fireless house, unless he was suffering from some ailment which had to be nursed in a cold, dark room. Finally, when it was close on lunch-time, and it was obvious that Elizabeth was not going to press Diva to stay, they made their thoughtful way to the front door, still completely baffled. Till now, so absorbed had they been in the mystery, Diva had quite forgotten Elizabeth’s unconsciousness of her cropped head. Now it occurred to her again.
‘I’ve had my hair cut short this morning,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you notice it?’
‘Yes, dear, to be quite frank, since we are such old friends, I did,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But I thought it far kinder to say nothing about it. Far!’
‘Ho!’ said Diva, turning as red as her beret, and she trundled down the hill.
Benjy came back very sleepy after his golf, and in a foul temper, for the Padre, who always played with him morning and afternoon on Monday, to recuperate after the stress of Sunday, had taken two half-crowns off him, and he was intending to punish him by not going to church next Sunday. In this morose mood he took only the faintest interest in what might or might not have happened to Georgie. Diva’s theory seemed to have something to be said for it, though it was odd that if he was dead, there should not have been definite news by now. Presently Elizabeth gave him a little butterfly kiss on his forehead, to show she forgave him for his unpunctuality at breakfast, and left him in the garden-room to have a good snooze. Before his good snooze he had a good swig at a flask which he kept in a locked drawer of his business-table.
Diva’s theory was blown into smithereens next day, for Elizabeth from her bedroom window observed Foljambe letting herself into Mallards Cottage at eight o’clock, and a short stroll before breakfast showed her that blinds were up and chimneys smoking, and the windows of Georgie’s sitting-room opened for an airing. Though the mystery of yesterday had not been cleared up, normal routine had been resumed, and Georgie could not be dead.
After his sad lapse yesterday Benjy was punctual for breakfast this morning. Half-past eight was not his best time, for during his bachelor days he had been accustomed to get down about ten o’clock, to shout ‘Quai-hai’ to show he was ready for his food, and to masticate it morosely in solitude. Now all was changed: sometimes he got as far as ‘Quai’, but Elizabeth stopped her ears and said ‘There is a bell, darling,’ in her most acid voice. And concerning half-past eight she was adamant: she had all her household duties to attend to, and then after she had minutely inspected the larder, she had her marketing to do. Unlike him she was quite at her best and brightest (which was saying a good deal) at this hour, and she hailed his punctual advent to-day with extreme cordiality to show him how pleased she was with him.
‘Nice hot cup of tea for my Benjy, she said, ‘and dear me, what a disappointment – no, not disappointment: that wouldn’t be kind – but what a surprise for poor Diva. Blinds up, chimneys smoking at Mr Georgie’s, and there was she yesterday suggesting he was dead. Such a pessimist! I shan’t be able to resist teasing her about it.’
Benjy had entrenched himself behind the morning paper, propping it up against the teapot and the maidenhair fern which stood in the centre of the table, and merely grunted. Elizabeth, feeling terribly girlish, made a scratching noise against it, and then looked over the top.
‘Peep-o!’ she said brightly. ‘Oh, what a sleepy face! Turn to the City news, love, and see if you can find something called Siriami.’
A pause.
‘Yes: West African mine,’ he said. ‘Got any, Liz? Shares moved sharply up yesterday: gained three shillings. Oh, there’s a note about them. Excellent report received from the mine.’
‘Dear me! how lovely for the shareholders, I wish I was one,’ said Elizabeth with singular bitterness as she multiplied Lucia’s five hundred shares by three and divided them by twenty. ‘And what about my War Loan?’
‘Down half a point.’
‘That’s what comes of being patriotic,’ said Elizabeth, and went to see her cook. She had meant to have a roast pheasant for dinner this evening, but in consequence of this drop in her capital, decided on a rabbit. It seemed most unfair that Lucia should have made all that money (fifteen hundred shillings minus commission) by just scribbling a telegram, and dropping it in the High Street. Memories of a golden evening at Monte Carlo came back to her, when she and Be
njy returned to their pension after a daring hour in the Casino with five hundred francs between them and in such a state of reckless elation that he had an absinthe and she a vermouth before dinner. They had resolved never to tempt fortune again, but next afternoon, Elizabeth having decided to sit in the garden and be lazy while he went for a walk, they ran into each other at the Casino, and an even happier result followed and there was more absinthe and vermouth. With these opulent recollections in her mind she bethought herself, as she set off with her market-basket for her shopping, of some little savings she had earmarked for the expenses of a rainy day, illness or repair to the roof of Mallards. It was almost a pity to keep them lying idle, when it was so easy to add to them …
Diva trundled swiftly towards her with Paddy, her great bouncing Irish terrier, bursting with news, but Elizabeth got the first word.
‘All your gloomy anticipations about Mr Georgie quite gone phut, dear,’ she said. ‘Chimneys smoking, blinds up –’
‘Oh, Lord, yes,’ said Diva. ‘I’ve been up to have a look already. You needn’t have got so excited about it. And just fancy! Lucia bought some mining shares only yesterday, and she seems to have made hundreds and hundreds of pounds. She’s telegraphing now to buy some more. What did she say the mine was? Syrian Army, I think.’
Elizabeth made a little cooing noise, expressive of compassionate amusement.
‘I should think you probably mean Siriami, n’est ce pas?’ she said. ‘Siriami is a very famous gold mine somewhere in West Africa. Mon vieux was reading to me something about it in the paper this morning. But surely, dear, hundreds and hundreds of pounds is an exaggeration?’