Lucia Victrix

by E. F. Benson

  ‘I never thought to have heard such words from you,’ she said.

  ‘And I never thought to be told that strips from a mangy tiger-skin were too smart to wear in Tilling,’ retorted Diva. ‘And pray, Elizabeth, don’t make a face as if you were going to cry. Do you good to hear the truth. You think everybody else is being mysterious and getting into deceitful ways just because you’re doing so yourself. All these weeks you’ve been given honey and driven in Susan’s Royce and nobody’s contradicted you because – oh, well, you know what I mean, so leave it at that.’

  Elizabeth whisked up her market-basket and the door banged. Diva opened the window to get rid of that horrid smell of haddock.

  ‘I’m not a bit sorry,’ she said to herself. ‘I hope it may do her good. It’s done me good, anyhow.’

  The weather cleared, and visiting the flooded trench one evening Lucia saw that the water had soaked away and that digging could be resumed. Accordingly she sent word to her two workmen to start their soil-shifting again at ten next morning. But when, awaking at seven, she found the sun pouring into her room from a cloudless sky, she could not resist going out to begin operations alone. It was a sparkling day, thrushes were scudding about the lawn listening with cocked heads for the underground stir of worms and then rapturously excavating for their breakfast: excavation, indeed, seemed like some beautiful law of Nature which all must obey. Moreover she wanted to get on with her discoveries as quickly as possible, for to be quite frank with herself, the unfortunate business of the Spencer-tile had completely exploded, sky-high, all her evidence, and in view of what she had already told the reporter from the Hastings Chronicle, it would give a feeling of security to get some more. To-day was Friday, the Hastings Chronicle came out on Saturday, and, with the earth soft for digging, with the example of the thrushes on the lawn and the intoxicating tonic of the April day, she had a strong presentiment that she would find the rest of that sacred bottle with the complete dedication to Apollo in time to ring up the Hastings Chronicle with this splendid intelligence before it went to press.

  Trowel in hand Lucia jumped lightly into the trench. Digging with a trowel was slow work, but much safer than with pick and shovel, for she could instantly stop when it encountered any hard underground resistance which might prove to be a fragment of what she sought. Sometimes it was a pebble that arrested her stroke, sometimes a piece of pottery, and once her agonized heart leapt into her mouth when the blade of her instrument encountered and crashed into some brittle substance. But it was only a snail-shell: it proved to be a big brown one and she remembered a correspondence in the paper about the edible snails which the Romans introduced into Britain, so she put it carefully aside. The clock struck nine and Grosvenor stepping cautiously on the mud which the rain had swept on to the gravel path came out to know when she would want breakfast. Lucia didn’t know herself, but would ring when she was ready.

  Grosvenor had scarcely gone back again to the house, when once more Lucia’s trowel touched something which she sensed to be brittle, and she stopped her stroke before any crash followed, and dug round the obstruction with extreme caution. She scraped the mould from above it, and with a catch in her breath disclosed a beautiful piece of glass, iridescent on the surface, and of a rich green in substance. She clambered out of the trench and took it to the garden tap. Under the drip of the water there appeared stamped letters of the same type as the APOL on the original fragment: the first four were LINA, and there were several more, still caked with a harder incrustation, to follow. She hurried to the garden-room, and laid the two pieces together. They fitted exquisitely, and the ‘Apol’ on the first ran straight on into the ‘Lina’ of the second.

  ‘Apollina,’ murmured Lucia. In spite of her Latin studies and her hunts through pages of Roman inscriptions, the name ‘Apollina’ (perhaps a feminine derivative from Apollo) was unfamiliar to her. Yet it held the suggestion of some name which she could not at once recall. Apollina … a glass vessel. Then a hideous surmise loomed up in her mind, and with brutal roughness regardless of the lovely iridescent surface of the glass, she rubbed the caked earth off the three remaining letters, and the complete legend ‘Apollinaris’ was revealed.

  She sat heavily down and looked the catastrophe in the face. Then she took a telegraph form, and after a brief concentration addressed it to the editor of the Hastings Chronicle, and wrote: ‘Am obliged to abandon my Roman excavations for the time. Stop. Please cancel my interview with your correspondent as any announcement would be premature. Emmeline Lucas, Mallards House, Tilling.’

  She went into the house and rang for Grosvenor.

  ‘I want this sent at once,’ she said.

  Grosvenor looked with great disfavour at Lucia’s shoes. They were caked with mud which dropped off in lumps on to the carpet.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ she said. ‘And hadn’t you better take off your shoes on the doormat? If you have breakfast in them you’ll make an awful mess on your dining-room carpet. I’ll bring you some indoor shoes and then you can put the others on again if you’re going on digging after breakfast.’

  ‘I shan’t be digging again,’ said Lucia.

  ‘Glad to hear it, ma’am.’

  Lucia breakfasted, deep in meditation. Her excavations were at an end, and her one desire was that Tilling should forget them as soon as possible, even as, in the excitement over them, it had forgotten about Elizabeth’s false pretences. Oblivion must cover the memory of them, and obliterate their traces. Not even Georgie should know of the frightful tragedy that had occurred until all vestiges of it had been disposed of; but he was coming across at ten to help her, and he must be put off, with every appearance of cheerfulness so that he should suspect nothing. She rang him up, and her voice was as brisk and sprightly as ever.

  ‘Dood morning, Georgino,’ she said. ‘No excavazione to-day.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Georgie. ‘I was looking forward to finding more glass vessel.’

  ‘Me sorry, too,’ said Lucia. ‘Dwefful busy to-day, Georgie. We dine to-morrow, don’t we, alla casa dei sapienti.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Georgie, completely puzzled.

  ‘At the Wyses’,’ said Lucia.

  She went out to the garden-room. Bitter work was before her but she did not flinch. She carried out, one after the other, trays A, B, C and D, to the scene of her digging, and cast their contents into the trench. The two pieces of glass that together formed a nearly complete Apollinaris bottle gleamed in the air as they fell, and the undecipherable coin clinked as it struck them. Back she went to the garden-room and returned to the London Library every volume that had any bearing on the Roman occupation of Britain. At ten o’clock her two workmen appeared and they were employed for the rest of the day in shovelling back into the trench every spadeful of earth which they had dug out of it. Their instructions were to stamp it well down.

  Lucia had been too late to stop her brief communication to the reporter of the Hastings Chronicle from going to press, and next morning when she came down to breakfast she found a marked copy of it (‘see page 2’ in blue pencil). She turned to it and with a curdling of her blood read what this bright young man had made out of the few words she had given him.

  ‘All lovers of art and archaeology will be thrilled to hear of the discoveries that Mrs Lucas has made in the beautiful grounds of her Queen Anne mansion at Tilling. The châtelaine of Mallards House most graciously received me there a few days ago, and in her exquisite salon which overlooks the quaint old-world street gave me, over “the cup that cheers but not inebriates”, a brilliant little résumé of her operations up to date and of her hopes for the future. Mrs Lucas, as I need not remind my readers, is the acknowledged leader of the most exclusive social circles in Tilling, a first-rate pianist, and an accomplished scholar in languages, dead and alive.

  ‘“I have long,” she said, “been studying that most interesting and profoundly significant epoch in history, namely the Roman occupation of Britain, and it has long b
een my day-dream to be privileged to add to our knowledge of it. That day-dream, I may venture to say, bids fair to become a waking reality.”

  “‘What made you first think that there might be Roman remains hidden in the soil of Tilling?” I asked.

  ‘She shook a playful but warning finger at me. (Mrs Lucas’s hands are such as a sculptor dreams of but seldom sees.)

  ‘“Now I’m not going to let you into my whole secret yet,” she said. “All I can tell you is that when, a little while ago, the street outside my house was dug up to locate some naughty leaking gas pipe, I, watching the digging closely, saw something unearthed that to me was indisputable evidence that under my jardin lay the remains of a Roman villa or temple. I had suspected it before: I had often said to myself that this hill of Tilling, commanding so wide a stretch of country, was exactly the place which those wonderful old Romans would have chosen for building one of their castra or forts. My intuition has already been justified, and, I feel sure, will soon be rewarded by even richer discoveries. More I cannot at present tell you, for I am determined not to be premature. Wait a little while yet, and I think, yes, I think you will be astonished at the results …’”

  Grosvenor came in.

  ‘Trunk-call from London, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Central News Agency.’

  Lucia, sick with apprehension, tottered to the Office.

  ‘Mrs Lucas?’ asked a buzzing voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Central News Agency. We’ve just heard by phone from Hastings of your discovery of Roman remains at Tilling,’ it said. ‘We’re sending down a special representative this morning to inspect your excavations and write –’

  ‘Not the slightest use,’ interrupted Lucia. ‘My excavations have not yet reached the stage when I can permit any account of them to appear in the press.’

  ‘But the London Sunday papers are most anxious to secure some material about them to-morrow, and Professor Arbuthnot of the British Museum, whom we have just rung up, is willing to supply them. He will motor down and be at Tilling –’

  Lucia turned cold with horror.

  ‘I am very sorry,’ she said firmly, ‘but it is quite impossible for me to let Professor Arbuthnot inspect my excavations at this stage, or to permit any further announcement concerning them.’

  She rang off, she waited a moment, and, being totally unable to bear the strain of the situation alone, rang up Georgie. There was no Italian or baby-talk to-day.

  ‘Georgie, I must see you at once,’ she said.

  ‘My dear, anything wrong about the excavations?’ asked the intuitive Georgie.

  ‘Yes, something frightful. I’ll be with you in one minute.’

  ‘I’ve only just begun my break –’ said Georgie and heard the receiver replaced.

  With the nightmare notion in her mind of some sleuthhound of an archaeologist calling while she was out and finding no excavation at all, Lucia laid it on Grosvenor to admit nobody to the house under any pretext, and hatless, with the Hastings Chronicle in her hand, she scudded up the road to Mallards Cottage. As she crossed the street she heard from the direction of Irene’s house a prolonged and clamorous ringing of a dinner-bell, but there was no time now even to conjecture what that meant.

  Georgie was breakfasting in his blue dressing-gown. He had been touching up his hair and beard with the contents of the bottle that always stood in a locked cupboard in his bedroom. His hair was not dry yet, and it was most inconvenient that she should want to see him so immediately. But the anxiety in her telephone-voice was unmistakable, and very likely she would not notice his hair.

  ‘All quite awful, Georgie,’ she said, noticing nothing at all. ‘Now first I must tell you that I found the rest of the Apollo-vessel yesterday, and it was an Apollinaris bottle.’

  ‘My dear, how tarsome,’ said Georgie sympathetically.

  ‘Tragic rather than tiresome,’ said Lucia. ‘First the Spencer-tile then the Apollinaris bottle. Nothing Roman left, and I filled up the trench yesterday. Finito! Georgie, how I should have loved a Roman temple in my garden! Think of the prestige! Archaeologists and garden-parties with little lectures! It is cruel. And then as if the extinction of all I hoped for wasn’t enough there came the most frightful complications. Listen to the Hastings Chronicle of this morning.’

  She read the monstrous fabrication through in a tragic monotone.

  ‘Such fibs, such inventions!’ she cried. ‘I never knew what a vile trade journalism was! I did see a young man last week – I can’t even remember his name or what he looked like – for two minutes, not more, and told him just what I said you might tell Tilling. It wasn’t in the garden-room and I didn’t give him tea, because it was just before lunch, standing in the hall, and I never shook a playful forefinger at him or talked about day-dreams or naughty gas pipes, and I never called the garden jardin, though I may have said giardino. And I had hardly finished reading this tissue of lies just now, when the Central News rang me up and wanted to send down Professor Arbuthnot of the British Museum to see my excavations. Georgie, how I should have loved it if there had been anything to show him! I stopped that – the Sunday London papers wanted news too – but what am I to do about this revolting Chronicle?’

  Georgie glanced through the paper again.

  ‘I don’t think I should bother much,’ he said. ‘The châtelaine of Mallards, you know, leader of exclusive circles, lovely hands, pianist and scholar: all very complimentary. What a rage Elizabeth will be in. She’ll burst.’

  ‘Very possibly,’ said Lucia. ‘But don’t you see how this drags me down to her level? That’s so awful. We’ve all been despising her for deceiving us and trying to make us think she was to have a baby, and now here am I no better than her, trying to make you all think I had discovered a Roman temple. And I did believe it much more than she ever believed the other. I did indeed, Georgie, and now it’s all in print which makes it ever so much worse. Her baby was never in print.’

  Georgie had absently passed his fingers through his beard, to assist thought, and perceived a vivid walnut stain on them. He put his hand below the tablecloth.

  ‘I never thought of that,’ he said. ‘It is rather a pity. But think how very soon we forgot about Elizabeth. Why it was almost the next day after she gave up going to be a mother and took in the old green skirt again that you got on to your discoveries, and nobody gave a single thought to her baby any more. Can’t we give them all something new to jabber about?’

  Georgie had got up from the table and with his walnut hand still concealed strayed to the open window and looked out.

  ‘If that isn’t Elizabeth at the door of Mallards!’ he said. ‘She’s got a paper in her hand: Hastings Chronicle, I bet. Grosvenor’s opened the door, but not very wide. Elizabeth’s arguing –’

  ‘Georgie, she mustn’t get in,’ cried the agonized Lucia. ‘She’ll pop out into the garden, and see there’s no excavation at all.’

  ‘She’s still arguing,’ said Georgie in the manner of Brangaene warning Isolde. ‘She’s on the top step now … Oh, it’s all right. Grosvenor’s shut the door in her face. I could hear it, too. She’s standing on the top step, thinking. Oh, my God, she’s coming here, just as she did before, when she was canvassing. But there’ll be time to tell Foljambe not to let her in.’

  Georgie hurried away on this errand, and Lucia flattened herself against the wall so that she could not be seen from the street. Presently the door-bell tinkled, and Foljambe’s voice was heard firmly reiterating, ‘No, ma’am, he’s not at home … No ma’am, he’s not in … No, ma’am, he’s out, and I can’t say when he’ll be in. Out.’

  The door closed, and next moment Elizabeth’s fell face appeared at the open window. A suspiciously minded person might have thought that she wanted to peep into Georgie’s sitting-room to verify (or disprove) Foljambe’s assertions, and Elizabeth, who could read suspicious minds like an open book, made haste to dispel so odious a supposition. She gave a slight scream at seeing him so cl
ose to her and in such an elegant costume.

  ‘Dear Mr Georgie,’ she said. ‘I beg your pardon, but your good Foljambe was so certain you were out, and I, seeing the window was open, I – I just meant to pop this copy of the Hastings Chronicle in. I knew how much you’d like to see it. Lovely things about sweet Lucia, châtelaine of Mallards and Queen of Tilling and such a wonderful archaeologist. Full of surprises for us. How little one knows on the spot!’

  Georgie, returning from warning Foljambe, had left the door ajar, and in consequence Lucia, flattening herself like a shadow against the wall between it and the window, was in a strong draught. The swift and tingling approach of a sneeze darted through her nose and it crashed forth.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Georgie in a loud voice to Elizabeth, hoping in a confused manner by talking loud to drown what had already resounded through the room. Instantly Elizabeth thrust her head a little further through the window and got a satisfactory glimpse of Lucia’s skirt. That was enough: Lucia was there and she withdrew her head from its strained position.

  ‘We’re all agog about her discoveries,’ she said. ‘Such an excitement! You’ve seen them, of course.’

  ‘Rather!’ said Georgie with enthusiasm. ‘Beautiful Roman tiles and glass and pottery. Exquisite!’

  Elizabeth’s face fell: she had hoped otherwise.

  ‘Must be trotting along,’ she said. ‘We meet at dinner, don’t we, at Susan Wyse’s. Her Majesty is coming, I believe.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know she was in Tilling,’ said Georgie. ‘Is she staying with you?’

  ‘Naughty! I only meant the Queen of Tilling.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Georgie, ‘Au reservoir.’

  Lucia came out of her very unsuccessful lair.

  ‘Do you think she saw me, Georgie?’ she asked. ‘It might have been Foljambe as far as the sneeze went.’

  ‘Certainly she saw you. Not a doubt of it,’ said Georgie, rather pleased at this compromising role which had been provided for him. ‘And now Elizabeth will tell everybody that you and I were breakfasting in my dressing-gown – you see what I mean – and that you hid when she looked in. I don’t know what she mightn’t make of that.’