Lucia Victrix

by E. F. Benson

  Diva had left off her eyebrows. They took too long, and she was tired of always looking surprised when, as on this occasion, she was not surprised.

  ‘I suppose you mean about Mr Georgie going off alone,’ she said.

  ‘Among other worries. Benjy and I both grieve for her. Mr Georgie’s infatuation is evidently increasing. First of all there was that night here –’

  ‘No: Lucia came back,’ said Diva.

  ‘Never quite cleared up, I think. And then he’s been staying at Riseholme without her, unless you’re going to tell me that Worship went over every evening and returned at cock-crow for her duties here.’

  ‘Olga asked them both, anyhow,’ said Diva.

  ‘So we’ve been told, but did she? And this time Lucia’s certainly not been asked. It’s mounting up, and it must be terrible for her. All that we feared at first is coming true, as I knew it would. And I don’t believe for a moment that he’ll come back at the end of a week.’

  ‘That would be humiliating,’ said Diva.

  ‘Far be it from me to insinuate that there’s anything wrong,’ continued Elizabeth emphatically, ‘but if I was Lucia I shouldn’t like it, any more than I should like it if you and Benjy went for a week and perhaps more to Le Touquet.’

  ‘And I shouldn’t like it either,’ said Diva. ‘But I’m sorry for Lucia, too.’

  ‘I dare say she’ll need our sympathy before long,’ said Elizabeth darkly. ‘And how truly grateful I am to her for taking that Leg woman off my hands. Such an incubus. How she managed it I don’t inquire. She may have poisoned Leg’s mind about me, but I should prefer to be poisoned than see much more of her.’

  ‘Now you’re getting mixed, Elizabeth,’ protested Diva. ‘It was Leg’s mind you suggested was poisoned, not you.’

  ‘That’s a quibble, dear,’ said Elizabeth decidedly. ‘You’ll hardly deny that Benjy and I were most civil to the woman. I even asked Lucia and Irene to meet her, which was going a long way considering Lucia’s conduct about the Corporation plate and the Mayor’s book. But I couldn’t have stood Leg much longer, and I should have had to drop her … I must be off; so busy to-day, like Worship. A Council meeting this afternoon.’

  Lucia always enjoyed her Council meetings. She liked presiding, she liked being suave and gracious and deeply conscious of her own directing will. As she took her seat to-day, she glanced at the wall behind her, where before long Irene’s portrait of her would be hanging. Minutes of the previous meeting were read, reports from various committees were received, discussed and adopted. The last of these was that of the committee which had been appointed to make its recommendation to the Council about her portrait. She had thought over a well-turned sentence or two: she would say what a privilege it was to make this work of genius the permanent possession of the Borough. Miss Coles, she need hardly remind the Council was a Tillingite of whom they were all proud, and the painter also of the Picture of the Year, in which there figured two of Tilling’s most prominent citizens, one being a highly honoured member of the Council. (‘And then I shall bow to Elizabeth,’ thought Lucia, ‘she will appreciate that.’)

  She looked at the agenda.

  ‘And now we come to our last business, ladies and gentlemen,’ she said. ‘To receive the report of the Committee on the Mayor’s offer of a portrait of herself to the Council, to be hung in the Town Hall.’

  Elizabeth rose.

  ‘As Chairman of this Committee,’ she said, ‘it is my duty to say that we came to the unanimous conclusion that we cannot recommend the Council to accept the Mayor’s most generous gift.’

  The gracious sovereignty of Lucia’s demeanour did not suffer the smallest diminution.

  ‘Those in favour of accepting the findings of the Committee?’ she asked. ‘Unanimous, I think.’

  Never, in all Lucia’s triumphant career, had she suffered so serious a reverse, nor one out of which it seemed more impossible to reap some incidental advantage. She had been dismissed from Sheffield Castle at the shortest notice, but she had got a harvest of photographs. Out of her inability to find the brake on her bicycle, thus madly scorching through a crowded street, she had built herself a monument for dash and high athletic prowess. She always discovered silver linings to the blackest of clouds, but now, scrutinize them as she might, she could detect in them none but the most sombre hues. Her imagination had worked out a dazzling future for this portrait. It would hang on the wall behind her; the Corporation, at her request, would lend it (heavily insured) to the Royal Academy exhibition next May, where it would be universally acclaimed as a masterpiece far outshining the Venus of the year before. It would be lithographed or mezzo-tinted, and she would sign the first fifty pulls. Visitors would flock to the Town Hall to see it; they would recognize her as she flashed by them on her bicycle or sat sketching at some picturesque corner; admiring the mellow front of Mallards, the ancestral home of the Mayor, they would be thrilled to know that the pianist, whose exquisite strains floated out of the open window of the garden-room, was the woman whose portrait they had just seen above her official chair. Such thoughts as these were not rigidly defined but floated like cloud-castles in the sky, forming and shifting and always elegant.

  Now of those fairy edifices there was nothing left. The Venus was to be exhibited at the Carlton Gallery and then perhaps to form a gem in the collection of some American millionaire, and Elizabeth would go out into all lands and Benjy to the ends of the earth, while her own rejected portrait would be returned to Mallards, with the best thanks of the committee, like Georgie’s sunny morning on the marsh, and Susan’s budgerigar, and Diva’s sardine tartlet. (And where on earth should she hang this perpetual reminder of defeated dreams?) … Another aspect of this collapse struck her. She had always thought of herself as the beneficent director of municipal action, but now the rest of her Council had expressed unanimous agreement with the report of a small malignant committee, instead of indignantly rallying round her and expressing their contempt of such base ingratitude. This was a snub to which she saw no possible rejoinder except immediate resignation of her office, but that would imply that she felt the snub, which was not to be thought of. Besides, if her resignation was accepted, there would be nothing left at all.

  Her pensive steps, after the Council meeting was over, had brought her to the garden-room, and the bright japanned faces of tin boxes labelled ‘Museum’, ‘Fire Brigade’ or ‘Burial Board’ gave her no comfort: their empty expressions seemed to mock her. Had Georgie been here, she could have confided the tragedy to him without loss of dignity. He would have been sympathetic in the right sort of way: he would have said ‘My dear, how tarsome! That foul Elizabeth: of course she was at the bottom of it. Let’s think of some plan to serve her out.’ But without that encouragement she was too flattened out to think of Elizabeth at all. The only thing she could do was to maintain, once more, her habitual air of prosperous self-sufficiency. She shuddered at the thought of Tilling being sorry for her, because, communing with herself, she seemed to sense below this superficial pity, some secret satisfaction that she had had a knock. Irene, no doubt, would be wholly sincere, but though her prestige as an artist had suffered indignity, what difference would it make to her that the Town Council of Tilling had rejected her picture, when the Carlton Gallery in London had craved the loan of her Venus, and an American millionaire was nibbling for its purchase? Irene would treat it as a huge joke; perhaps she would design a Christmas card showing Mapp, as a nude, mature, female Cupid, transfixing Benjy’s heart with a riding-whip. For a moment, as this pleasing fantasy tickled Lucia’s brain, she smiled wanly. But the smile faded again: not the grossest insult to Elizabeth would mend matters. A head held high and a total unconsciousness that anything disagreeable had happened was the only course worthy of the Mayor.

  The council meeting had been short, for no reports from committees (especially the last) had raised controversy, and Lucia stepped briskly down the hill to have tea in public at Diva’s, and exhibit
herself as being in cheerful or even exuberant spirits. Just opposite the door was drawn up a monstrous motor, behind which was strapped a dress-basket and other substantial luggage with the initials P.S. on them. ‘A big postscript,’ thought Lucia, lightening her heavy heart with humorous fancies, and she skirted round behind this ponderous conveyance, and so on to the pavement. Two women were just stepping out of ye olde tea-house: one was Elizabeth dripping with unctuous smiles, and the other was Poppy Sheffield.

  ‘And here’s sweet Worship herself,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Just in time to see you. How fortunate!’

  Some deadly misgiving stirred in Lucia’s heart as Poppy turned on her a look of blank unrecognition. But she managed to emit a thin cry of welcome.

  ‘Dear Duchess!’ she said. ‘How naughty of you to come to my little Tilling without letting me know. It was au revoir when we parted last.’

  Poppy still seemed puzzled, and then (unfortunately, perhaps) she began to remember.

  ‘Why, of course!’ she said. ‘You came to see me at the Castle, owing to some stupid misunderstanding. My abominable memory. Do tell me your name.’

  ‘Lucia Pillson,’ said the wretched woman. ‘Mayor of Tilling.’

  ‘Yes, how it all comes back,’ said Poppy, warmly shaking hands. ‘That was it. I thought your husband was the Mayor of Tilling, and I was expecting him. Quite. So stupid of me. And then tea and photographs, wasn’t it? I trust they came out well.’

  ‘Beautifully. Do come up to my house – only a step – and I’ll show you them.’

  ‘Alas! not a moment to spare. I’ve spent such a long time chatting to all your friends. Somebody – somebody called Leg, I think – introduced them to me. She said she had been to my house in London which I dare say was quite true. One never can tell. But I’m catching, at least I hope so, the evening boat at Seaport on my way to stay with Olga Bracely at Le Touquet. Such a pleasure to have met you again.’

  Lucia presented a brave front.

  ‘Then do come and dine and sleep here to break your journey on your return,’ she said. ‘I shall expect you to propose yourself at any time, like all my friends. Just a wire or a telephone-call. Georgie and I are sure to be here. Impossible for me to get away in these crowded months –’

  ‘That would be nice,’ said Poppy. ‘Good-bye: Mrs Pillson, isn’t it? Quite. Charmed, I’m sure: so pleasant. Drive straight on to the quay at Seaport,’ she called to her chauffeur.

  Lucia kissed her hand after the car.

  ‘How lucky just to have caught her for a moment,’ she drawled to Elizabeth, as they went back into ye olde tea-house. ‘Naughty of her not to have let me know. How dreadfully bad her memory is becoming.’

  ‘Shocking,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You should persuade her to see somebody about it.’

  Lucia turned on the full horse-power of her courage for the coming encounter in ye olde tea-house. The moment she saw the faces of her friends assembled there, Evie and Leg and Diva, she knew she would need it all.

  ‘You’ve just missed an old friend, Lucia,’ said Susanna. (Was there in her words a touch of the irony for which Rudolph da Vinci was celebrated?)

  ‘Too unfortunate, dear Susanna,’ said Lucia. ‘But I just got a word with her. Off to stay at Le Touquet, she said. Ah! I never told her she would find Georgie there. My memory is getting as bad as hers. Diva, may I have a one and sixpenny?’

  Diva usually went down to the kitchen to see to the serving of a one and sixpenny, but she only called the order down the stairs to Janet. And her face lacked its usual cordiality.

  ‘You’ve missed such a nice chat,’ she said.

  There was a silence pregnant with trouble. It was impossible, thought Lucia, that her name should not have figured in the nice chat, or that Poppy should not have exhibited that distressing ignorance about her which had been so evident outside. In any case Elizabeth would soon promulgate the news with the addition of that hideous detail, as yet undiscovered, that she had been asked to Sheffield Castle only because Poppy thought that Georgie was Mayor of Tilling. Brave cheerfulness was the only possible demeanour.

  ‘Too unfortunate,’ she repeated, ‘and I could have been here half an hour ago, for we had quite a short Council meeting. Nothing controversial: all went so smoothly –’

  The memory of that uncontroversial rejection of her portrait brought her up short. Then the sight of Elizabeth’s wistful, softly smiling face lashed her forward again.

  ‘How you will laugh, Susanna,’ she said brightly, ‘when I tell you that the Council unanimously refused to accept my gift of the portrait Irene painted of me which you admired so much. A small committee advised them against it. And ecco!’

  Susanna’s laugh lacked the quality of scorn and contempt for the Council, for which Lucia had hoped. It sounded amused.

  ‘Well, that was a pity,’ she said. ‘They just didn’t like it. But you can’t get people to like what they don’t like by telling them that they ought to.’

  The base desertion was a shock. Lucia looked without favour at the sumptuous one and sixpenny Janet had brought her, but her voice remained calm.

  ‘I think I was wrong to have offered it them at all,’ she said. ‘I ought to have known that they could not understand it. What fun Irene and I will have over it when I tell her. I can hear her scream “Philistines! Vandals!” and burst into shrieks of laughter. And what a joy to have it back at Mallards again!’

  Elizabeth continued to smile.

  ‘No place like home is there, dear?’ she said. ‘Where will you hang it?’

  Lucia gave up the idea of eating her sardine tartlet. She had intended to stay on, until Susanna and Elizabeth left, and find out from Diva what had been said about her before she came in. She tried a few light topics of general interest, evoking only short replies of paralysing politeness. This atmosphere of veiled hostility was undermining her. She knew that if she went first, Elizabeth would pour out all that Poppy had let slip on the doorstep, but perhaps the sooner that was known the better. After drinking her tea and scalding her mouth she rose.

  ‘I must be off,’ she said. ‘See you again very soon, Susanna. One and sixpence, Diva? Such a lovely tea.’

  Elizabeth continued smiling till the door closed.

  ‘Such odd things happened outside,’ she said. ‘Her Poppy didn’t recognize her. She asked her who she was. And Worship wasn’t invited to Sheffield Castle at all. Poppy thought that Mr Georgie was the Mayor, and the invitation was for him. That was why Worship came back so soon.’

  ‘Gracious, what a crash!’ said Diva.

  ‘It always comes in time,’ said Elizabeth thoughtfully. ‘Poor thing, we must be very gentle with her, but what a lot of things we must avoid talking about!’

  She enumerated them on her plump fingers.

  ‘Duchesses, Castles, photographs – I wonder if they were picture-postcards – prima donnas, for I’m sure she’d have gone to Le Touquet, if she had been asked – portraits – it was my duty to recommend the Council not to accept that daub – gadabout husbands – I haven’t got enough fingers. Such a lot of subjects that would tear old wounds open, and she’s brought it all on herself, which makes it so much more bitter for her.’

  Diva, who hated waste (and nothing would keep in this hot weather) ate Lucia’s sardine tartlet.

  ‘Don’t gloat, Elizabeth!’ she commanded. ‘You may say sympathetic things, but there’s a nasty tone in the way you say them. I’m really rather sorry for her.’

  ‘Which is just what I have been trying to express,’ retorted Elizabeth.

  ‘Then you haven’t expressed it well. Not that impression at all. Goodness, here’s a fresh party coming in. Janet!’

  Lucia passed by the fishmonger’s, and some stir of subconscious cerebration prompted her to order a dressed crab that she saw in the window. Then she went home and out into the garden-room. This second blow falling so fast on the heels of the first, caused her to reel. To all the dismal reflections occasioned by the
rejection of her portrait there were added those appropriate to the second, and the composite mental picture presented by the two was appalling. Surely some malignant Power, specially dedicated to the service of her discomfiture, must have ordained the mishaps (and their accurate timing) of this staggering afternoon: the malignant Power was a master of stage-craft. Who could stand up against a relentless tragedian? Lucia could not, and two tears of self-pity rolled down her cheeks. She was much surprised to feel their tickling progress, for she had always thought herself incapable of such weakness, but there they were. The larger one fell on to her blotting-pad, and she dashed the smaller aside.

  She pulled herself together. Whatever humiliations were heaped on her, her resolve to continue sprightly and dominant and unsubdued was as firm as ever, and she must swallow pity or contempt without apparently tasting them. She went to her piano, and through a slightly blurred vision had a good practice at the difficult treble part of the duet Georgie and she had run through before his departure. She did a few bracing physical exercises, and a little deep-breathing. ‘I have lost a great deal of prestige,’ she said to herself as she held her breath and puffed it out again, ‘but that shall not upset me. I shall recover it all. In a fortnight’s time, if not less, I shall be unable to believe that I could ever have felt so abject and have behaved so weakly. Sursum corda! I shall –’

  Her telephone-bell rang. It required a strong call on her courage to answer it, for who could tell what fresh calamity might not be sprung on her? When she heard the name of the speaker, she nearly rang off, for it seemed so impossible. Probably some infamous joke was being played on her. But she listened.

  ‘I’ve just missed my boat,’ said the voice, ‘and sleeping in a hotel makes me ill for a week. Would you be wonderfully kind and let me dine and sleep? You were so good as to suggest that this afternoon. Then I can catch the early boat to-morrow.’

  A sob of joy rose in Lucia’s throat.