by E. F. Benson
‘Good morning,’ said Susan. ‘What a horrid smell of burned feathers.’
Lucia sniffed, still standing firm.
‘I do smell something,’ she said. ‘Gas, surely. I thought I smelt it the other day. I must send for my town surveyor. Do you not smell gas, Mrs Simpson?’
Lucia focused on her secretary the full power of her gimlet eye.
‘Certainly, gas,’ said that loyal woman, locking the Museum box.
‘Most disagreeable,’ said Lucia, advancing on Susan. ‘Let us go into the garden and have our little talk there. I know what you’ve come about: Irene’s picture. The Picture of the Year, they say. Elizabeth is famous at last, and is skipping for joy. I am so pleased for her sake.’
‘I should certainly have said burned feathers,’ repeated Susan.
Dire speculations flitted through Lucia’s mind: would Susan’s vague but retentive brain begin to grope after a connection between burned feathers and her vanished bird? A concentration of force and volubility was required, and taking another step forward on to another blue feather, she broke into a gabble of topics as she launched Susan, like a huge liner, down the slip of the garden-room stairs.
‘No, Susan, gas,’ she said. ‘And have you seen the reproduction of Irene’s picture in The Times? Mrs Simpson, would you kindly bring The Times into the garden. You must stroll across the lawn and have a peep at my daffodils in my giardino segreto. Never have I had such a show. Those lovely lines “dancing with the daffodils”. How true! I saw you in the High Street this morning, dear, on your tricycle. And such wallflowers; they will be in fullest bloom for my party next week, to which you and Mr Wyse must come. And Benjy in the clouds; so like, but Georgie says it isn’t a bottle, but his umbrella. Tell me exactly what you think of it all. So important that I should know what Tilling feels.’
Unable to withstand such a cataract of subjects, Susan could hardly say ‘burned feathers’ again. She showed a tendency to drift towards the garden-room on their return, but Lucia, like a powerful tug, edged her away from that dangerous shoal and towed her out to the front door of Mallards, where she cast her adrift to propel her tricycle under her own steam. Then returning to the garden-room, she found that the admirable Mrs Simpson had picked up a few more feathers, which she had laid on Lucia’s blotting-pad.
Lucia threw them into the fire and swept up some half-burned fragments from the hearth.
‘The smell of gas seems quite gone, Mrs Simpson,’ she said. ‘No need, I think, to send for my town surveyor. It is such a pleasure to work with anyone who understands me as well as you … Yes, the list for my garden-party.’
The replica of the riding-whip was delivered, and looked identical. Lucia’s disposition of it was singular. After she had retired for the night, she tied it safely up among the foliage of the Clematis montana which grew thickly up to the sill of her bedroom window. The silver top soon grew tarnished in this exposure, spiders spun threads about it, moisture dulled its varnished shaft, and it became a weathered object. ‘About ripe,’ said Lucia to herself one morning, and rang up Elizabeth and Benjy, inviting them to tea at ye olde tea-house next day, with bridge to follow. They had just returned from their visit to London to see the Picture of the Year, and accepted with pleasure.
Before starting for Diva’s, Lucia took her umbrella up to her bedroom, and subsequently carried it to the tea-room, arriving there ten minutes before the others. Diva was busy in the kitchen, and she looked into the card-room. Yes: there was the heavy cupboard with claw feet standing in the corner; perfect. Her manoeuvres then comprised opening her umbrella and furling it again; and hearing Diva’s firm foot on the kitchen-stairs she came softly back into the tea-room.
‘Diva, what a delicious smell!’ she said. ‘Oh I want eighteen-penny teas. I came a few minutes early to tell you.’
‘Reckoned on that,’ said Diva. ‘The smell is waffles. I’ve been practising. Going to make waffles at my lecture, as an illustration, if I can do them over a spirit-lamp. Hand them round to the front row. Good advertisement. Here are the others.’
The waffles were a greater success than Diva had anticipated, and the compliments hardly made up for the consumption. Then they adjourned to the card-room, and Lucia, leaning her umbrella against the wall let it slip behind the big cupboard.
‘So clumsy!’ she said, ‘but never mind it now. We shall have to move the cupboard afterwards. Cut? You and I, Georgie. Families. Happy families.’
It was chatty bridge at first, rich in agreeable conversation.
‘We only got back from London yesterday,’ said Elizabeth, dealing. ‘Such a rush, but we went to the Academy three times; one no-trump.’
‘Two spades,’ said Georgie. ‘What did you think of the Picture?’
‘Such a crowd round it! We had to scriggle in.’
‘And I’m blest if I don’t believe that they recognized Liz,’ put in Major Benjy. ‘A couple of women looked at her and then at the picture and back again, and whispered together, by Jove.’
‘I’m sure they recognized me at our second visit,’ said Elizabeth. ‘The crowd was thicker than ever, and we got quite wedged in. Such glances and whisperings all round. Most entertaining, wasn’t it, Benjy?’
Lucia tried to cork up her bitterness, but failed.
‘I am glad you enjoyed it so much, dear,’ she said. ‘How I envy you your superb self-confidence. I should find such publicity quite insupportable. I should have scriggled out again at whatever cost.’
‘Dear Worship, I don’t think you would if you ever found yourself in such a position,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You would face it. So brave!’
‘If we’re playing bridge, two spades was what I said. Ever so long ago,’ announced Georgie.
‘Oh, Mr Georgie; apologies,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I’m such a chatterbox. What do you bid, Benjy? Don’t be so slow.’
‘Two no-trumps,’ said Benjy. ‘We made our third visit during lunch-time, when there were fewer people –’
‘Three spades,’ said Lucia. ‘All I meant, dear Elizabeth, was that it is sufficient for me to tackle my little bit of public service, quietly and humbly and obscurely –’
‘So like you, dear,’ retorted Elizabeth, ‘and I double three spades. That’ll be a nice little bit for you to tackle quietly.’
Lucia made no reply, but the pleasant atmosphere was now charged with perilous stuff, for on the one side the Mayor was writhing with envy at the recognition of Elizabeth from the crowds round the Picture of the Year, while the Mayoress was writhing with exasperation at Lucia’s pitiful assertion that she shunned publicity.
Lucia won the doubled contract and the game.
‘So there’s my little bit, Georgie,’ she said, ‘and you played it very carefully, though of course it was a sitter. I ought to have redoubled: forgive me.’
‘Benjy, your finesse was idiotic,’ said Elizabeth, palpably wincing. ‘If you had played your ace, they’d have been two down. Probably more.’
‘And what about your doubling?’ asked Benjy. ‘And what about your original no-trump?’
‘Thoroughly justified, both of them,’ said Elizabeth, ‘if you hadn’t finessed. Cut to me, please, Worship.’
‘But you’ve just dealt, dear,’ cooed Lucia.
‘Haw, Haw. Well tried, Liz,’ said Benjy.
Elizabeth looked so deadly at Benjy’s gentle fun that at the end of the hand Lucia loaded her with compliments.
‘Beautifully played, dear!’ she said. ‘Did you notice, Georgie, how Elizabeth kept putting the lead with you? Masterly!’
Elizabeth was not to be appeased with that sort of blarney.
‘Thank you, dear,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Benjy: I ought to have put the lead with Worship, and taken another trick.’
Diva came in as they were finishing the last rubber.
‘Quite a lot of teas,’ she said. ‘But they all come in so late now. Hungrier, I suppose. Saves them supper. No more waffles for shilling teas. Not if I kno
w it. Too popular.’
Lucia had won from the whole table, and with an indifferent air she swept silver and copper into her bag without troubling to count it.
‘I must be off,’ she said. ‘I have pages of Borough expenditure to look through. Oh, my umbrella! I nearly forgot it.’
‘Dear Worship,’ asked Elizabeth. ‘Do tell me what that means! Either you forget a thing, or you don’t.’
‘I let it slip behind your big cupboard, Diva,’ said Lucia, not taking the slightest notice of her Mayoress.
‘Catch hold of that end, Georgie, and we’ll run it out from the wall.’
‘Permit me,’ said Benjy, taking Lucia’s end. ‘Now then, with a heave-ho, as they say in the sister service. One, two, three.’
He gave a tremendous tug. The cupboard, not so heavy as it looked, glided away from the wall with an interior rattle of crockery.
‘Oh, my things!’ cried Diva. ‘Do be careful.’
‘Here’s your umbrella,’ said Georgie. ‘Covered with dust … Why, what’s this? Major Benjy’s riding-whip, isn’t it? Lost here ages ago. Well, that is queer!’
Diva simply snatched it from Georgie.
‘But it is!’ she cried. ‘Initials, everything. Must have lain here all this time. But at your lecture the other day Major –’
Lucia instantly interrupted her.
‘What a fortunate discovery!’ she said. ‘How glad you will be, Major, to get your precious relic back. Why it’s half-past seven! Good night everybody.’
She and Georgie let themselves out into the street.
‘But you must tell me,’ said he, as they walked briskly up the hill. ‘I shall die if you don’t tell me. How did you do it?’
‘I? What do you mean?’ asked the aggravating woman.
‘You’re too tarsome,’ said Georgie crossly. ‘And it isn’t fair. Diva told you how she buried the silver cap, and I told you how I dug it up, and you tell us nothing. Very miserly!’
Lucia was startled at the ill-humour in his voice.
‘My dear, I was only teasing you –’ she began.
‘Well it doesn’t amuse me to be teased,’ he snapped at her. ‘You’re like Elizabeth sometimes.’
‘Georgie, what a monstrous thing to say to me! Of course, I’ll tell you, and Diva, too. Ring her up and ask her to pop in after dinner.’
She paused with her hand on the door of Mallards. ‘But never hint to the poor Mapp-Flints,’ she said, ‘as Diva did just now, that the riding-whip Benjy used at his lecture couldn’t have been the real one. They knew that quite well, and they knew we know it. Much more excruciating for them not to rub it in.’
8
Lucia, followed by Georgie, and preceded by an attendant, swept along the corridor behind the boxes on the grand tier at Covent Garden Opera House. They had dined early at their hotel and were in good time. She wore her seed-pearls in her hair, her gold Mayoral badge, like an Order, on her breast, and her gown was of a rich, glittering russet hue like cloth of copper. A competent-looking lady, hovering about with a small note-book and a pencil, hurried up to her as the attendant opened the door of the box.
‘Name, please,’ he said to Lucia.
‘The Mayor of Tilling,’ said Lucia, raising her voice for the benefit of the lady with the note-book.
He consulted his list.
‘No such name, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Madam has given strict orders.’
‘Mr and Mrs Pillson,’ suggested Georgie.
‘That’s all right, sir’; and in they went.
The house was gleaming with tiaras and white shoulders, and loud with conversation. Lucia stood for a minute at the front of the box which was close to the stage, and nodded and smiled as she looked this way and that, as if recognizing friends … But, oh, to think that she might have been recognized, too, if only Irene had portrayed her in the Picture of the Year! They had been to see it this afternoon, and Georgie, also, had felt pangs of regret that it was not he with his Vandyck beard who sprawled windily among the clouds. But in spite of that he was very happy for in a few minutes now he would hear and see his adorable Olga again, and they were to lunch with her to-morrow at her hotel.
A burst of applause hailed the appearance of Cortese, composer, librettist and, to-night, conductor of Lucrezia. Lucia waggled her hand at him. He certainly bowed in her direction (for he was bowing in all directions), and she made up her mind to scrap her previous verdict on the opera and be enchanted with it.
The Royal party unfortunately invisible from Lucia’s box arrived, and after the National Anthem the first slow notes of the overture wailed on the air.
‘Divine!’ she whispered to Georgie. ‘How well I remember dear Signor Cortese playing it to me at Riseholme. I think he took it a shade faster … There! Lucrezia’s motif, or is it the Pope’s? Tragic splendour. The first composer in Europe.’
If Georgie had not known Lucia so well, he would scarcely have believed his ears. On that frightful evening, three years ago, when Olga had asked her to come and hear ‘bits’ of it, she had professed herself outraged at the hideous, modern stuff, but there were special circumstances on that occasion which conduced to pessimism. Lucia had let it be widely supposed that she talked Italian with ease and fluency, but when confronted with Cortese, it was painfully clear that she could not understand a word he said. An awful exposure … Now she was in a prominent box, guest of the prima donna, at this gala performance, she could not be called upon to talk to Cortese without annoying the audience very much, and she was fanatic in admiration. She pressed Georgie’s hand, emotion drowning utterance; she rose in her place at the end of Olga’s great song in the first act, crying ‘Brava! Brava!’ in the most correct Italian, and was convinced that she led the applause that followed.
During the course of the second act, the box was invaded by a large lady, clad in a magnificent tiara, but not much else, and a small man, who hid himself at the back. Lucia felt justly indignant at this interruption, but softened when the box-attendant appeared with another programme, and distinctly said ‘Your Grace’ to the large lady. That made a difference, and during the interval Lucia talked very pleasantly to her (for when strangers were thrown together stiffness was ridiculous) and told her how she had heard her beloved Olga run through some of her part before the opera was produced, and that she had prophesied a huge success for it. She was agonizing to know what the large lady was the Grace of, but could scarcely put so personal a question on such short acquaintance. She did not seem a brilliant conversationalist, but stared rather fixedly at Georgie … At the end of the opera there was immense enthusiasm: Olga and Cortese were recalled again and again, and during these effusions, Her unidentified Grace and her companion left: Lucia presumed that they were husband and wife as they took no notice of each other. She regretted their disappearance, but consoled herself with the reflection that their names would appear in the dazzling list of those who would be recorded in the press to-morrow as having attended the first performance of Lucrezia. The competent female in the corridor would surely see to that.
Georgie lay long awake that night. The music had excited him, and, more than the music, Olga herself. What a voice, what an exquisite face and presence, what an infinite charm! He recalled his bachelor days at Riseholme, when Lucia had been undisputed Queen of that highly cultured village and he her cavaliere servente, whose allegiance had been seriously shaken by Olga’s advent. He really had been in love with her, he thought, and the fact that she had a husband alive then, to whom she was devoted, allowed a moral man like him to indulge his emotions in complete security. It had thrilled him with daring joy to imagine that, had Olga been free, he would have asked her to marry him, but even in those flights of fancy he knew that her acceptance of him would have put him in a panic. Since then, of course, he had been married himself, but his union with Lucia had not been formidable, as they had agreed that no ardent tokens of affection were to mar their union. Marriage, in fact, with Lucia might be regarded as a vow o
f celibacy. Now, after three years, the situation was reversing itself in the oddest manner. Olga’s husband had died and she was free, while his own marriage with Lucia protected him. His high moral principles would never suffer him to be unfaithful to his wife. ‘I am not that sort of man,’ he said to himself. ‘I must go to sleep.’
He tossed and turned on his bed. Visions of Olga as he had seen her to-night floated behind his closed eyelids. Olga as a mere girl at the fête of her infamous father Pope Alexander VI: Olga at her marriage in the Sistine Chapel to the Duke of Biseglia: his murder in her presence by the hired bravos of His Holiness and her brother. The scenery was fantastically gorgeous (‘not Shakespearian at all, Georgie,’ Lucia had whispered to him), but when Olga was on the stage, he was conscious of nothing but her. She outshone all the splendour, and never more so than when, swathed in black, she followed her husband’s bier, and sang that lament – or was it a song of triumph? – ‘Amore misterioso, celeste, profondo’ … ‘I believe I’ve got a very passionate nature,’ thought Georgie, ‘but I’ve always crushed it.’
It was impossible to get to sleep, and wheeling out of bed, he lit a cigarette and paced up and down his room. But it was chilly, and putting on a smart blue knitted pullover he got back into bed again. Once more he jumped up; he had no ashtray, but the lid of his soap-dish would do, and he reviewed Life.
‘I know Tilling is very exciting,’ he said to himself, ‘for extraordinary things are always happening, and I’m very comfortable there. But I’ve no independence. I’m devoted to Lucia, but what with breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner, as well as a great deal in between … And then how exasperating she is as Mayor! What with her ceaseless jaw about her duties and position I get fed up. Those tin boxes with nothing in them! Mrs Simpson every morning with nothing to do! I want a change. Sometimes I almost sympathize with Elizabeth, when Lucia goes rolling along like the car of Juggernaut, squish-squash, whoever comes in her way. And yet it’s she, I really believe, who makes things happen, just because she is Lucia, and I don’t know where we should be without her. Good gracious, that’s the second cigarette I’ve smoked in bed, and I had my full allowance before. Why didn’t I bring up my embroidery? That often makes me sleepy. I shall be fit for nothing to-morrow, lying awake like this, and I must go shopping in the morning, and then we lunch with Olga, and catch the afternoon train back to That Hole. Damn everything!’