Lucia Victrix

by E. F. Benson

‘Delighted, Duchess,’ she answered. ‘So glad you took me at my word and proposed yourself.’

  ‘Many thanks. I shall be with you in an hour or so.’

  Lucia skipped to the bell, and kept her finger on it till Grosvenor came running out.

  ‘Grosvenor, the Duchess of Sheffield will be here in about an hour to dine and sleep,’ cried Lucia, still ringing. ‘What is there for dinner?’

  ‘Couldn’t say, except for a dressed crab that’s just come in –’ began Grosvenor.

  ‘Yes, I ordered it,’ cried Lucia excitedly, ceasing to ring. ‘It was instinctive, Grosvenor, it was a leading. Things like that often happen to me. See what else, and plenty of strong coffee.’

  Grosvenor went into the house, and the music of triumphant meditations poured through Lucia’s brain.

  ‘Shall I ask Benjy and Elizabeth?’ she thought. ‘That would crush Elizabeth for ever, but I don’t really wish her such a fate. Diva? No. A good little thing, but it might seem odd to Poppy to meet at dinner a woman to whom she had paid a shilling for her tea, or perhaps eighteen-pence. Susanna Leg? No: she was not at all kind about the picture. Shall I send for the Mayor’s book and get Poppy to write in it? Again, no. It would look as if I wanted to record her visit officially, whereas she only just drops in. We will be alone, I think. Far more chic.’

  Grosvenor returned with the modest menu, and Lucia added a savoury.

  ‘And I shan’t dress, Grosvenor,’ she said. ‘Her Grace (rich words!) will be leaving very early, and she won’t want to unpack, I expect.’

  Her Grace arrived. She seemed surprised not to find Georgie there, but was pleased to know that he was staying with Olga at Le Touquet. She went to bed very soon after dinner, and left at eight next morning. Never had Lucia waited so impatiently for the shopping-hour, when casually, drawlingly, she would diffuse the news.

  The first person she met was Elizabeth herself, who hurried across the street with an odious smile of kindly pity on her face.

  ‘So lonely for you, Worship, all by yourself without Mr Georgie,’ she said. ‘Pop in and dine with us tonight.’

  Lucia could have sung aloud to think how soon that kindly pity would be struck from the Mayoress’s face. She pressed a finger to her forehead.

  ‘Let me think,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid … No, that’s to-morrow… Yes, I am free. Charmed.’ She paused, prolonging the anticipation of the wonderful disclosure.

  ‘And I had such a queer little surprise last night,’ she drawled. ‘I went home after tea at Diva’s – of course you were there – and played my piano a while. Then the eternal telephone rang. Who do you think it was who wanted to dine and sleep at such short notice?’

  Elizabeth curbed her longing to say ‘Duchess Poppy,’ but that would have been too unkind and sarcastic.

  ‘Tell me, dear,’ she said.

  ‘The Duchess,’ said Lucia. ‘I begged her, do you remember, when we three met for a minute yesterday, just to propose herself… And an hour afterwards, she did. Dear vague thing! She missed her boat and can’t bear hotels and telephoned. A pleasant quiet evening. She went off again very early to-day, to catch the morning boat. I wonder if she’ll succeed this time. Eight o’clock this evening then? I shall look forward to it.’

  Lucia went into a shop, leaving Elizabeth speechless on the pavement, with her mouth wide open. Then she closed it, and it assumed its grimmest aspect. She began to cross the street, but leaped back to the pavement again on the violent hooting, almost in her ear, of Susan’s Royce.

  ‘So sorry if it made you jump,’ said Susan, putting her face out of the window, ‘but I hear that Lucia’s Duchess was here yesterday and didn’t know her from Adam. Or Eve. Either of them. Can it be true?’

  ‘I was there,’ said Elizabeth. ‘She hadn’t the slightest idea who Worship was.’

  ‘That’s odd, considering all those photographs.’

  ‘There’s something odder yet,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Worship has just told me she had a visitor to dine and sleep, who left very early this morning. Guess who that was!’

  ‘I never can guess, as you know,’ said Susan. ‘Who?’

  ‘She!’ cried Elizabeth shrilly. ‘And Lucia had the face to tell me so!’

  Mr Wyse, concealed behind the immense bulk of his wife, popped his head round the corner of her shoulder. The Mayoress’s savage countenance so terrified him that he popped it back again.

  ‘How Worship’s conscience will let her tell such whoppers, is her concern and not mine, thank God,’ continued the Mayoress. ‘What I deplore is that she should think me idiotic enough to believe them. Does one woman ask another woman, whom she doesn’t know by sight, to let her dine and sleep? Does she?’

  Mr Wyse always refused to be drawn into social crises. ‘Drive on,’ he said in a low voice down the speaking-tube, and the car hooted and moved away. Elizabeth screamed ‘Does she,’ after it.

  The news spread fast, and there was only one verdict on it. Obviously Lucia had invented the story to counter the mortification of being unrecognized by Poppy the day before. ‘So silly,’ said Diva, when Elizabeth plunged into the tea-house and told her. ‘Much better to have lived it down. We’ve all got to live things down sometimes. She’s only made it much harder for herself. What’s the good of telling lies which nobody can believe? When you and I tell lies, Elizabeth, it’s in the hope anyhow – What is it Janet?’

  ‘Please ma’am, Grosvenor’s just told me there was a visitor at Mallards last night, and who do you think –’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard,’ said Diva. ‘I’ll be down in the kitchen in a minute.’

  ‘And making poor Grosvenor her accomplice,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Come and dine to-night, Diva. I’ve asked Worship, and you must help Benjy and me to get through the evening. You must help us to keep her off the subject, or I shall lose my self-control and forget that I’m a lady and tell her she’s a liar.’

  Lucia spent a wonderfully happy day. She came straight home after telling Elizabeth her news, for it was far more lofty not to spread it herself and give the impression that she was gratified, and devoted herself to her music and her reading, as there was no municipal business to occupy her. Long before evening everyone would know, and she would merely make casual allusions at dinner to her visitor, and inflame their curiosity. She went out wearing her seed-pearls in the highest spirits.

  ‘Dear host and hostess,’ she said as she swept in. ‘So sweet of you to take compassion on my loneliness. No, Major Benjy, no sherry thanks, though I really deserve some after my long day. Breakfast at half-past seven –’

  ‘Fancy! That was early!’ interrupted Elizabeth. Diva entered.

  ‘So sorry,’ she said. ‘A bit late. Fearfully busy afternoon. Worn out. Yes, Major Benjy: just half a glass.’

  ‘I was just saying that I had had a long day, too,’ said Lucia. ‘My guest was off at eight to catch the early boat at Seaport –’

  ‘Such a good service,’ put in Benjy. ‘Liz and I went by that route on our honeymoon.’

  ‘– and would get to Le Touquet in time for lunch.’

  ‘Well, dinner, dinner,’ said Benjy, and in they went.

  ‘I’ve not seen Susan Leg to-day,’ remarked Diva. ‘She usually drops in to tea now.’

  ‘She’s been writing hard,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I popped in for a minute. She’s got some material now, she told me.’

  This dark saying had a bright lining for Lucia. Her optimistic mind concluded that Susanna knew about her visitor, and she laughed gaily as dressed crab was handed to her.

  ‘Such a coincidence,’ she said. ‘Last night I had ordered dressed crab before – dear Elizabeth, I never get tired of it – before I was rung up from Seaport. Was not that lucky? Her favourite food.’

  ‘And how many teas did you say you served to-day, Diva?’ asked Elizabeth.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you yet. Janet hadn’t finished counting up. People still in the garden when I left.’

  ‘I heard from Geor
gie to-day,’ said Lucia. ‘He’ll be back from Le Touquet on Saturday. The house was quite full already, he said, and he didn’t know where Olga would put another guest.’

  ‘Such lovely September weather,’ said Elizabeth. ‘So good for the crops.’

  Lucia was faintly puzzled. They had all been so eager to hear about her visit to Sheffield Castle, and now whenever she brought up kindred topics, Elizabeth or Diva changed the subject with peculiar abruptness. Very likely Elizabeth was a little jealous, a little resentful that Lucia had not asked her to dine last night. But she could explain that.

  ‘It was too late, alas,’ she said, ‘to get up a small party,’ she said, ‘as I should have so much liked to do. Simply no time. We didn’t even dress.’

  Elizabeth rose.

  ‘Such a short visit,’ she said, ‘and breakfast at half-past seven. Fancy! Let us have a rubber, as we needn’t get up so early to-morrow.’

  Lucia walked home in the bright moonlight, making benevolent plans. If Poppy broke her return journey by staying a night here she must certainly have a party. She vaguely regretted not having done so last night: it would have given pleasure, and she ought to welcome all opportunities of making treats for her friends… They were touchy folk; to-night they had been harsh with each other over bridge, but to her they had been scrupulously polite, receiving all her criticisms of their play in meek silence. Perhaps they were beginning to perceive at last that she was a different class of player from them. As she caressed this vainglorious thought, she stopped to admire the chaste whiteness of the moonlight on the church tower, which seemed to point skywards as if towards her own serene superiority among the stars. Then quite suddenly a violent earthquake happened in her mind, and it collapsed.

  ‘They don’t believe that Poppy ever stayed with me at all,’ she moaned. ‘They think I invented it. Infamous!’

  12

  For the whole of the next day no burgess of Tilling except Mrs Simpson and the domestic staff, set eyes on the Mayor. By a strong effort of will Lucia took up her market-basket after breakfast with the intention of shopping, but looking out from the window of her hall, she saw Elizabeth on the pavement opposite, sketching the front of the ancestral house of her aunt by marriage. She could not face Elizabeth yet, for that awful mental earthquake in the churchyard last night had shattered her nerve. The Mayor was a self-ordained prisoner in her own house, as Popes had been at the Vatican.

  She put down her basket and went back into the garden-room. She must show Elizabeth though not by direct encounter, that she was happy and brilliant and busy. She went to her piano and began practising scales. Arpeggios and roulades of the most dazzling kind followed. Slightly exhausted by this fine display she crept behind the curtain and peered out. Elizabeth was still there, and, in order to continue the impression of strenuous artistic activity, Lucia put on a gramophone record of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata. At the conclusion of that she looked out again; Elizabeth had gone. It was something to have driven that baleful presence away from the immediate neighbourhood, but it had only taken its balefulness elsewhere. She remembered how Susanna had said with regard to the rejected portrait (which no longer seemed to matter an atom) ‘You can’t get people to like what they don’t like by telling them that they ought to;’ and now a parallel aphorism suggested itself to Lucia’s harassed brain.

  ‘You can’t get people to believe what they won’t believe by telling them that it’s true,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Yet Poppy did stay here: she did, she did! And it’s too unfair that I should lose more prestige over that, when I ought to have recovered all that I had lost … What is it, Grosvenor?’

  Grosvenor handed her a telegram.

  ‘Mr Georgie won’t be back till Monday instead of Saturday,’ said Lucia in a toneless voice. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Shall Cook do the shopping, ma’am, if you’re not going out? It’s early closing.’

  ‘Yes. I shall be alone for lunch and dinner,’ said Lucia, wishing that it were possible for all human affairs to shut down with the shops.

  She glanced at Georgie’s telegram again, amazed at its lightheartedness. ‘Having such fun,’ it ran. ‘Olga insists I stop till Monday. Know you won’t mind. Devoted Georgie.’

  She longed for devoted Georgie, and fantastic ideas born of pure misery darted through her head. She thought of replying: ‘Come back at once and stand by me. Nobody believes that Poppy slept here.’ She thought of asking the BBC to broadcast an SOS: ‘Will George Pillson last heard of to-day at Le Touquet, return at once to Tilling where his wife the Mayor –’ No, she could not say she was dangerously ill. That would alarm him; besides he would find on arrival that she was perfectly well. He might even come by air, and then the plane might crash and he would be burned to death. She realized that such thoughts were of the most morbid nature, and wondered if a glass of sherry would disperse them. But she resisted. ‘I won’t risk becoming like Major Benjy,’ she said to herself, ‘and I’ve got to stick it alone till Monday.’

  The hours crept dismally by: she had lunch, tea and dinner by herself. One fragment of news reached her through Grosvenor and that was not encouraging. Her cook had boasted to Elizabeth’s parlourmaid that she had cooked dinner for a Duchess, and the parlourmaid with an odd laugh, had advised her not to be so sure about that. Cook had returned in a state of high indignation, which possibly she had expressed by saturating Lucia’s soup with pepper, and putting so much mustard into her devilled chicken that it might have been used as a plaster for the parlourmaid. Perhaps these fiery substances helped to kindle Lucia again materially, and all day psychical stimulants were at work: pride which refused to surrender, the extreme boredom of being alone, and the consciousness of rectitude. So next morning, after making sure that Elizabeth was not lurking about, Lucia set forth with her market-basket. Irene was just coming out of her house, and met her with a grave and sympathetic face.

  ‘Darling, I am so sorry about it,’ she said.

  Lucia naturally supposed that she was referring to the rejection of the portrait.

  ‘Don’t give it another thought,’ she said. ‘It will be such a joy to have it at Mallards. They’re all Goths and Vandals and Elizabeths.’

  ‘Oh that!’ said Irene. ‘Who cares? Just wait till I’ve touched up Elizabeth and Benjy for the Carlton Gallery. No, about this septic Duchess. Why did you do it? So unwise!’

  Lucia wondered if some fresh horror had ripened, and her mouth went dry.

  ‘Why did I do what?’ she asked.

  ‘Say that she’d been to stay with you, when she didn’t even know you by sight. So futile!’

  ‘But she did stay with me!’ cried Lucia.

  ‘No, no,’ said Irene soothingly. ‘Don’t go on saying it. It wounds me. Naturally, you were vexed at her not recognizing you. You had seen her before somewhere, hadn’t you!’

  ‘But this is preposterous!’ cried Lucia. ‘You must believe me. We had dressed crab for dinner. She went to bed early. She slept in the spare room. She snored. We breakfasted at half-past seven –’

  ‘Darling, we won’t talk about it any more,’ said Irene. ‘Whenever you want me, I’ll come to you. Just send for me.’

  ‘I shall want you,’ said Lucia with awful finality, ‘when you beg my pardon for not believing me.’

  Irene uttered a dismal cry, and went back into her house. Lucia with a face of stone went on to the High Street. As she was leaving the grocer’s her basket bumped against Diva’s, who was entering.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Diva. ‘Rather in a hurry. My fault.’

  It was as if an iceberg, straight from the North Pole, had apologized. Mr Wyse was just stepping on to the pavement, and he stood hatless as she hailed him.

  ‘Lovely weather, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Georgie writes to me that they’re having the same at Le Touquet. We must have some more bridge-parties when he gets back.’

  ‘You enjoy your bridge so much, and play it so beautifully,’ said Mr Wyse with a bow. ‘
And, believe me, I shall never forget your kindness over Susan’s budgerigar.’

  In Lucia’s agitated state, this sounded dreadfully like an assurance that, in spite of all, she hadn’t lost his friendship. Then with an accession of courage, she determined to stick to her guns.

  ‘The Duchess’s visit to me was at such short notice,’ she said, ‘that there was literally not time to get a few friends together. She would so much have liked to see you and Susan.’

  ‘Very good of you to say so. I – I heard that she had spent the night under your hospitable roof. Ah! I see Susan beckoning to me.’

  Lucia’s shopping had not raised her spirits, and when she went up the street again towards Mallards, there was Elizabeth on the pavement opposite, at her easel. But now the sight of her braced Lucia. It flashed through her mind that her dear Mayoress had selected this subject for her sketch in order to keep an eye on her, to observe, as through a malicious microscope, her joyless exits and entrances and report to her friends how sad and wan she looked: otherwise Elizabeth would never have attempted anything which required the power to draw straight lines and some knowledge, however elementary, of perspective. All the more reason, then, that Lucia should be at her very best and brightest and politest and most withering.

  Elizabeth out of the corner of her eye saw her approaching and kissed the top end of her paint-brush to her.

  ‘Good morning, dear Worship,’ she said. ‘Been shopping and chatting with all your friends? Any news?’

  ‘Good morning, sindaca mia,’ she said. ‘That means Mayoress, dear. Oh, what a promising sketch! But have you quite got the mellow tone of the bricks in my garden-room? I should suggest just a touch of brown-madder.’

  Elizabeth’s paint-brush began to tremble.

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ she said. ‘Brown-madder. I must remember that.’

  ‘Or a little rose-madder mixed with burnt sienna would do as well,’ continued Lucia. ‘Just stippled on. You will find that will give the glowing effect you want.’

  Elizabeth wondered whether Lucia could have realized that nobody in Tilling believed that Poppy had ever stayed with her and yet remain so complacent and superior. She hoped to find an opportunity of introducing that topic. But she could find something to say on the subject of Art first.