Lucia Victrix

by E. F. Benson

  ‘’Pon my word, a delightful little dinner,’ he said, as he closed the door into the little sitting-room. ‘Good talk, good friends, a glass of jolly good wine and a rubber to follow. What more can a man ask, I ask you, and Echo answers “Cern’ly not.” And I’ve not had a pow-wow with you for a long time, Signora, as old Camelia Faradiddleone would say.’

  Lucia saw that he had had about enough wine, but after many evenings with Elizabeth who wouldn’t?

  ‘No, I’ve been quite a hermit lately,’ she said. ‘So busy with my little jobs – oh, take care of your cigar, Major Benjy: it’s burning the edge of the table.’

  ‘Dear me, yes, monstrous stupid of me: where there’s smoke there’s fire! We’ve been busy, too, settling in. How do you think Liz is looking?’

  ‘Very well, exceedingly well,’ said Lucia enthusiastically. ‘All her old energy, all her delightful activity seem to have returned. At one time –’

  Major Benjy looked round to see that the door was closed and nodded his head with extreme solemnity.

  ‘Quite, quite. Olive-branches. Very true,’ he said. ‘Marvellous woman, ain’t she, the way she’s put it all behind her. Felt it very much at the time, for she’s mos’ sensitive. Highly strung. Concert pitch. Liable to ups and downs. For instance, there was a paragraph in the Hastings paper this morning that upset Liz so much that she whirled about like a spinning top, butting into the tables and chairs. “Take it quietly, ’Lisbeth Mapp-Flint,” I told her. Beneath you to notice it, or should I go over and punch the Editor’s head?’

  ‘Do you happen to be referring to the paragraph about me and my little excavations?’ asked Lucia.

  ‘God bless me, if I hadn’t forgotten what it was about,’ cried Benjy. ‘You’re right, Msslucas, the very first time. That’s what it was about, if I may say so without prejudice. I only remembered there was something that annoyed ’Lisbeth Mapp-Flint, and that was enough for Major B, late of His Majesty’s India forces, God bless him, too. If something annoys my wife, it annoys me, too, that’s what I say. A husband’s duty, Msslucas, is always to stand between her and any annoyances, what? Too many annoyances lately and often my heart’s bled for her. Then it was a sad trial parting with her old home which she’d known ever since her aunt was a lil’ girl, or since they were lil’ girls together, if not before. Then that was a bad business about the Town Council and those dinner-bells. A dirty business I might call it, if there wasn’t a lady present, though that mustn’t go any further. Not cricket, hic. All adds up, you know, in the mind of a very sensitive woman. Twice two and four, if you see what I mean.’

  Benjy sank down lower in his chair, and after two attempts to relight his cigar, gave it up, and the eclipse spread a little further.

  ‘I’m not quite easy in my mind about ‘Lisbeth,’ he said, ‘an’ that’s why it’s such a privilege to be able to have quiet talk with you like this. There’s no more sympathetic woman in Tilling, I tell my missus, than Msslucas. A thousand pities that you and she don’t always see eye to eye about this or that, whether it’s dinner-bells or it might be Roman antiquities or changing houses. First it’s one thing and then it’s another, and then it’s something else. Anxious work.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s the slightest cause for you to be anxious, Major Benjy,’ said Lucia.

  Benjy thumped the table with one hand, then drew his chair a little closer to hers, and laid the other hand on her knee.

  ‘That reminds me what I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said. ‘Grebe, you know, our lil’ place Grebe. Far better house in my opinion than poor ole Auntie’s. I give you my word on that, and Major B’s word’s as good’s his bond, if not better. Smelt of dry rot, did Auntie’s house, and the paint peeling off the walls same as an orange. But ’Lisbeth liked it, Msslucas. It suited ’Lisbeth down to the ground. You give the old lady a curtain to sit behind an’ something puzzling going on in the street outside, and she’ll be azappy as a queen till the cows come home, if not longer. She misses that at our lil’ place, Grebe, and it goes to my heart, Msslucas.’

  He was rather more tipsy, thought Lucia, than she had supposed, but he was much better here, maundering quietly along than coming under Elizabeth’s eye, for her sake as well as his, for she had had a horrid evening with nothing but foam to drink and mackintosh and muscular drumstick to eat, to the accompaniment of all those frightful gaffes about cat-traps and recipes and nutritious honey and hints about Benjy’s recollections of the Pride of Poona, poor woman. Lucia sincerely hoped that the rubbers now in progress would be long, so that he might get a little steadier before he had to make a public appearance again.

  ‘It gives ’Lisbeth the hump, does Grebe,’ he went on in a melancholy voice. ‘No little side-shows going on outside. Nothing but sheep and sea-gulls to squint at from behind a curtain at our lil’ place. Scarcely worth getting behind a curtain at all, it isn’t, and it’s a sad come-down for her. I lie awake thinking of it, and I’ll tell you what, Msslucas, though it mustn’t go any further. Mum’s the word, like what we had at dinner. I believe, though I couldn’t say for certain, that she’d be willing to let you have Grebe, if you offered her thousan’ pounds premium, and go back to Auntie’s herself. Worth thinking about, or lemme see, do I mean that she’d give you thousan’ pounds premium? Split the difference. Why, here’s ’Lisbeth herself! There’s a curious thing!’

  Elizabeth stood in the doorway, and took him in from head to foot in a single glance, as he withdrew his hand from Lucia’s knee as if it had been a live coal, and, hoisting himself with some difficulty out of his chair, brushed an inch of cigar-ash off his waistcoat.

  ‘We’re going home, Benjy,’ she said. ‘Come along.’

  ‘But I want to have rubber of bridge, Liz,’ said he. ‘Msslucas and I’ve been waiting for our lil’ rubber of bridge.’

  Elizabeth continued to be as unconscious of Lucia as if they were standing for the Town Council again.

  ‘You’ve had enough pleasure for one evening, Benjy,’ said she, ‘and enough –’

  Lucia, crushing a natural even a laudable desire to hear what should follow, slipped quietly from the room and closed the door. Outside a rubber was still going on at one table, and at the other the Padre, Georgie and Diva were leaning forward discussing something in low tones.

  ‘But she had quitted her card,’ said Diva. ‘And the whole rubber was only ninepence, and she’s not paid me. Those hectoring ways of hers –’

  ‘Diva, dear,’ said Lucia, seating herself in the vacant chair. ‘Let’s cut for deal at once and go on as if nothing had happened. You and me. Laddies against lassies, Padre.’

  They were still considering their hands when the door into the inner room opened again, and Elizabeth swept into the room followed by Benjy.

  ‘Pray don’t let anyone get up,’ she said. ‘Such a lovely evening, dear Susan! Such a lovely party! No, Mr Wyse, I insist. My Benjy tells me it’s time for me to go home. So late. We shall walk and enjoy the beautiful stars. Do us both good. Galoshes outside in the hall. Everything.’

  Mr Wyse got up and pressed the bell.

  ‘But, my dear lady, no hurry, so early,’ he said. ‘A sandwich surely, a tunny sandwich, a little lemonade, a drop of whisky. Figgis: Whisky, sandwiches, galoshes!’

  Benjy suddenly raised the red banner of revolt. He stood quite firmly in the middle of the room, with his hand on the back of the Padre’s chair.

  ‘There’s been a lil’ mistake,’ he said. ‘I want my lil’ rubber of bridge. Fair play’s a jewel. I want my tummy sandwich and mouthful whisky and soda. I want –’

  ‘Benjy, I’m waiting for you,’ said Elizabeth.

  He looked this way and that but encountered no glance of encouragement. Then he made a smart military salute to the general company and marched from the room stepping carefully but impeccably, as if treading a tightrope stretched over an abyss, and shut the door into the hall with swift decision.

  ‘Puir wee mannie,’ said the Padr
e. ‘Three no-trumps, Mistress Plaistow.’

  ‘She had quitted the card,’ said Diva still fuming. ‘I saw the light between it and her fingers. Oh, is it me? Three spades, I mean four.’

  9

  Lucia and Georgie were seated side by side on the bench of the organ in Tilling church. The May sunshine streamed on to them through the stained glass of a south window, vividly colouring them with patches of the brightest hues, so that they looked like objects daringly camouflaged in war-time against enemy aircraft, for nobody could have dreamed that those brilliant Joseph-coats could contain human beings. The lights cast upon Lucia’s face and white dress reached her through a picture of Elijah going up to heaven in a fiery chariot. The heat from this vehicle would presumably have prevented the prophet from feeling cold in interstellar space, for he wore only an emerald-green bathing-dress which left exposed his superbly virile arms and legs, and his snowy locks streamed in the wind. The horses were flame-coloured, the chariot was red-hot, and high above it in an ultramarine sky hung an orange sun which seemed to be the object of the expedition. Georgie came under the influence of the Witch of Endor. She was wrapped in an eau-de-Nil mantle, which made his auburn beard look livid. Saul in a purple cloak, and Samuel in a black dressing-gown made sombre stains on his fawn-coloured suit.

  The organ was in process of rebuilding. A quantity of fresh stops were being added to it, and an electric blowing-apparatus had been installed. Lucia clicked on the switch which set the bellows working, and opened a copy of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata.

  ‘It sounds quite marvellous on the organ, Georgie,’ she said. ‘I was trying it over yesterday. What I want you to do is to play the pedals. Just those slow base notes: pom, pom. Quite easy.’

  Georgie put a foot on the pedals. Nothing happened.

  ‘Oh, I haven’t pulled out any pedal stop,’ said Lucia. By mistake she pulled out the tuba, and as the pedals happened to be coupled to the solo organ a blast of baritone fury yelled through the church. ‘My fault,’ she said, ‘entirely my fault, but what a magnificent noise! One of my new stops.’

  She uncoupled the pedals and substituted the bourdon: Elijah and the Witch of Endor rattled in their leaded frames.

  ‘That’s perfect!’ she said. ‘Now with one hand I shall play the triplets on the swell, and the solo tune with the other on the vox humana! Oh, that tuba again! I thought I’d put it in.’

  The plaintive throaty bleating of the vox humana was enervatingly lovely, and Lucia’s America-cloth eyes grew veiled with moisture.

  ‘So heart-broken,’ she intoned, her syllables keeping time with the air. ‘A lovely contralto tone. Like Clara Butt, is it not? The passionate despair of it. Fresh courage coming. So noble. No, Georgie, you must take care not to put your foot on two adjacent pedals at once. Now, listen! Do you hear that lovely crescendo? That I do by just opening the swell very gradually. Isn’t it a wonderful effect? … I am surprised that no one has ever thought of setting this sonata for the organ … Go on pulling out stops on the great organ – yes, to your left there – in case I want them. One always has to look ahead in organ playing. Arrange your palette, so to speak. No, I shan’t want them … It dies away, softer and softer … Hold on that bass C sharp till I say now … Now.’

  They both gave the usual slow movement sigh. Then the volume of Beethoven tumbled on to the great organ on which Georgie had pulled out all the stops, and the open diapasons received it with a shout of rapture. Lucia slipped from the bench to pick it up. On the floor round about was an assemblage of small pipes.

  ‘I think this lot is the cor anglais,’ she said. ‘I am putting in a beautiful cor anglais.’

  She picked up one of the pipes, and blew through it.

  ‘A lovely tone,’ she said. ‘It reminds one of the last act of Tristan, does it not, where the shepherd-boy goes on playing the cor anglais for ever and ever.’

  Georgie picked up a pipe belonging to the flute. It happened to be a major third above Lucia’s cor anglais, and they blew on them together with a very charming effect. They tried two others, but these happened to be a semitone apart, and the result was not so harmonious. Then they hastily put them down, for a party of tourists, being shown round the church by the Padre, came in at the north door. He was talking very strong Scots this morning, with snatches of early English in compliment to the architecture.

  ‘The orrgan, ye see, is being renovated,’ he said. ‘’Twill be a bonny instrument, I ken. Good morrow to ye, Mistress Lucas.’

  Then, as she and Georgie passed him on their way out, he added in an audible aside:

  ‘The leddy whose munificence has given it to the church. Eh, a grand benefaction. A thousand pounds and mair, what wi’ lutes and psaltery, and a’ the whustles.’

  ‘I often go and have a little practice on my organ during the workmen’s dinner-hour,’ said Lucia as they stepped out into the hot sunshine. ‘The organ, Georgie, I find is a far simpler instrument on which to get your effects than the piano. The stops supply expression: you just pull them out or push them in. That vox humana, for instance, with what ease one gets the singing tone, that’s so difficult on the piano.’

  ‘You’ve picked it up wonderfully quickly, said Georgie. ‘I thought you had a beautiful touch. And when will your organ be finished?’

  ‘In a month or less, I hope. We must have a service of dedication and recital: the Padre, I know, will carry out my wishes about that. Georgie, I think I shall open the recital myself. I am sure that Tilling would wish it. I should play some little piece, and then make way for the organist. I might do worse than give them that first movement of the “Moonlight”.’

  ‘I’m sure Tilling would be much disappointed if you didn’t,’ said Georgie warmly. ‘May I play the pedals for you?’

  ‘I was going to suggest that, and help me with the stops. I have progressed, I know, and I’m glad you like my touch, but I hardly think I could manage the whole complicated business alone yet. Festina lente. Let us practise in the dinner-hour every day. If I give the “Moonlight” it must be exquisitely performed. I must show them what can be done with it when the orchestral colour of the organ is added.’

  ‘I promise to work hard,’ said Georgie. ‘And I do think, as the Padre said to the tourists just now, that it’s a most munificent gift.’

  ‘Oh, did he say that?’ asked Lucia who had heard perfectly. ‘That was why they all turned round and looked at me. But, as you know, it was always my intention to devote a great part, anyhow, of what I made on the Stock Exchange to the needs of our dear Tilling.’

  ‘Very generous, all the same,’ repeated Georgie.

  ‘No, dear; simple duty. That’s how I see it … Now what have I got to do this afternoon? That tea-party for the school-children: a hundred and twenty are coming. Tea in the garden in the shade, and then games and races. You’ll be helping me all the time, won’t you? Only four o’clock till seven.’

  ‘Oh dear: I’m not very good with children,’ said Georgie. ‘Children are so sticky, particularly after tea, and I won’t run a race with anybody.’

  ‘You shan’t run a race. But you’ll help to start them, won’t you, and find their mothers for them and that sort of thing. I know I can depend on you, and children always adore you. Let me see: do I dine with you to-night or you with me?’

  ‘You with me. And then to-morrow’s your great dinner-party. I tell you I’m rather nervous, for there are so many things we mustn’t talk about, that there’s scarcely a safe subject. It’ll be the first complete party anyone’s had since that frightful evening at the Wyses’.’

  ‘It was clearly my duty to respond to Diva’s appeal,’ said Lucia, ‘and all we’ve got to do is to make a great deal of poor Elizabeth. She’s had a horrid time, most humiliating, Georgie, and what makes it worse for her is that it was so much her own fault. Four o’clock then, dear, this afternoon, or perhaps a little before.’

  *

  Lucia let herself into her house, musing at consider
able length on the frightful things that had happened since that night at the Wyses’ to which Georgie had alluded, when Elizabeth and Benjy had set out in their galoshes, to walk back to Grebe. That was an unwise step, for the fresh night air had made Benjy much worse and the curate returning home on the other side of the High Street after a meeting of the Band of Hope (such a contrast) had witnessed dreadful goings-on. Benjy had stood in the middle of the road, compelling a motor to pull up with a shriek of brakes, and asked to see the driver’s licence, insisting that he was a policeman in plain clothes on point duty. When that was settled in a most sympathetic manner by a real policeman, Benjy informed him that Msslucas was a regular stunner, and began singing ‘You are Queen of my heart to-night.’ At that point the curate, pained but violently interested, reluctantly let himself into his house, and there was no information to be had with regard to the rest of their walk home to Grebe. Then the sad tale was resumed, for Withers told Foljambe (who told Georgie who told Lucia) that Major Mapp-Flint on arrival had, no doubt humorously, suggested getting his gun and shooting the remaining tiger-skins in the hall, but that Mrs Mapp-Flint wouldn’t hear of it and was not amused. ‘Rather the reverse,’ said Withers … Bed.

  The curate felt bound to tell his spiritual superior about the scene in the High Street and Evie told Diva, so that by the time Elizabeth came up with her market-basket next morning, this sad sequel to the Wyses’ dinner-party was known everywhere. She propitiated Diva by paying her the ninepence which had been in dispute, and went so far as to apologize to her for her apparent curtness at the bridge-table last night. Then, having secured a favourable hearing, she told Diva how she had found Benjy sitting close to Lucia with his hand on her knee. ‘He had had more to drink than he should,’ she said, ‘but never would he have done that unless she had encouraged him. That’s her nature, I’m afraid: she can’t leave men alone. She’s no better than the Pride of Poona!’