by E. F. Benson
He stopped. His tone lacked sincerity; there seemed to be something in his mind which he left unsaid. Elizabeth gave him a piercing and confidential look.
‘Yes, Major Benjy?’ she suggested.
He glanced round like a conspirator to see there was no one eavesdropping.
‘Those parties, you know,’ he said. ‘Those entertainments which we’ve all enjoyed so much. Beautiful music. But Grebe’s a long way off on a wet winter night. Not just round the corner. Now if she was settling in Mallards—’
He saw at once what an appalling interpretation might be put on this, and went on in a great hurry.
‘You’ll have to come to our rescue, Miss Elizabeth,’ he said, dropping his voice so that even Diva could not hear. ‘When you’re back in your own house again, you’ll have to look after us all as you always used to. Charming woman, Mrs Lucas, and most hospitable, I’m sure, but in the winter, as I was saying, that long way out of Tilling, just to hear a bit of music, and have a tomato, if you see what I mean.’
‘Why, of course I see what you mean,’ murmured Elizabeth. ‘The dear thing, as you say, is so hospitable. Lovely music and tomatoes, but we must make a stand.’
‘Well, you can have too much of a good thing,’ said Major Benjy, ‘and for my part a little Mozart lasts me a long time, especially if it’s a long way on a wet night. Then I’m told there’s an idea of callisthenic classes, though no doubt they would be for ladies only—’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Our dear friend has got enough—shall we call it self-confidence?—to think herself capable of teaching anybody anything. If you aren’t careful, Major Benjy, you’ll find yourself in a skipping-match on the lawn at Grebe, before you know what you’re doing. You’ve been King Cophetua already, which I, for one, never thought to see.’
‘That was just once in a way,’ said he. ‘But when it comes to callisthenic classes—’
Diva, in an agony at not being able to hear what was going on, had crept up behind Elizabeth, and now crouched close to her as she stood leaning out of the window. At this moment, Lucia, having finished her piano-practice, came round the corner from Mallards into the High Street. Elizabeth hastily withdrew from the window and bumped into Diva.
‘So sorry: didn’t know you were there, dear,’ she said. ‘We must put our heads together another time, Major Benjy. Au reservoir.’
She closed the window.
‘Oh, do tell me what you’re going to put your heads together about,’ said Diva. ‘I only heard just the end.’
It was important to get allies: otherwise Elizabeth would have made a few well-chosen remarks about eavesdroppers.
‘It is sad to find that just when Lucia has settled never to leave us any more,’ she said, ‘that there should be so much feeling in Tilling about being told to do this and being made to listen to that. Major Benjy—I don’t know if you heard that part, dear—spoke very firmly, and I thought sensibly about it. The question really is if England is a free country or not, and whether we’re going to be trampled upon. We’ve been very happy in Tilling all these years, going our own way, and living in sweet harmony together, and I for one, and Major Benjy for another, don’t intend to put our necks under the yoke. I don’t know how you feel about it. Perhaps you like it, for after all you were Mary Queen of Scots just as much as Major Benjy was King Cophetua.’
‘I won’t go to any po-di-mus, after dinner at Grebe,’ said Diva. ‘I shouldn’t have gone to the last, but you persuaded us all to go. Where was your neck then, Elizabeth? Be fair.’
‘Be fair yourself, Diva,’ said Elizabeth with some heat. ‘You know perfectly well that I wanted you to go in order that you might all get your necks from under her yoke, and hear that she couldn’t speak a word of Italian.’
‘And a nice mess you made of that,’ said Diva. ‘But never mind. She’s established now as a perfect Italian linguist, and there it is. Don’t meddle with that again, or you’ll only prove that she can talk Greek too.’
Elizabeth rose and pointed at her like one of Raphael’s Sibyls.
‘Diva, to this day I don’t believe she can talk Italian. It was a conjuring trick, and I’m no conjurer but a plain woman, and I can’t tell you how it was done. But I will swear it was a trick. Besides, answer me this! Why doesn’t she offer to give us Italian lessons if she knows it? She has offered to teach us bridge and Homer and callisthenics and take choir-practices and arranged tableaux. Why not Italian?’
‘That’s curious,’ said Diva thoughtfully.
‘Not the least curious. The reason is obvious. Everyone snubbed me and scolded me, you among others, at that dreadful luncheon-party, but I know I’m right, and some day the truth will come out. I can wait. Meantime what she means to do is to take us all in hand, and I won’t be taken in hand. What is needed from us all is a little firmness.’
Diva went home thrilled to the marrow of her bones at the thought of the rich entertainment that these next months promised to provide. Naturally she saw through Elizabeth’s rodomontade about yokes and free countries: what she meant was that she intended to assert herself again, and topple Lucia over. Two could not reign in Tilling, as everybody could see by this time. ‘All most interesting,’ said Diva to herself. ‘Elizabeth’s got hold of Major Benjy for the present, and Lucia’s going to lose Georgie, but then men don’t count for much in Tilling: it’s brains that do it. There’ll be more bridge-parties and teas this winter than ever before. Really, I don’t know which of them I would back. Hullo, there’s a note from her. Lunch tomorrow, I expect… I thought so.’
Lucia’s luncheon-party next day was to be of the nature of a banquet to celebrate the double event of her recovery and of the fact that Tilling, instead of mourning her approaching departure, was privileged to retain her, as Elizabeth had said, for ever and ever. The whole circle of her joyful friends would be there, and she meant to give them to eat of the famous dish of lobster à la Riseholme, which she had provided for Georgie, a few weeks ago, to act as a buffer to break the shock of Foljambe’s engagement. It had already produced a great deal of wild surmise in the minds of the housewives at Tilling for no one could conjecture how it was made, and Lucia had been deaf to all requests for the recipe: Elizabeth had asked her twice to give it her, but Lucia had merely changed the subject without attempt at transition: she had merely talked about something quite different. This secretiveness was considered unamiable, for the use of Tilling was to impart its culinary mysteries to friends, so that they might enjoy their favourite dishes at each other’s houses, and lobster à la Riseholme had long been an agonizing problem to Elizabeth. She had made an attempt at it herself, but the result was not encouraging. She had told Diva and the Padre that she felt sure she had ‘guessed it’, and, when bidden to come to lunch and partake of it, they had both anticipated a great treat. But Elizabeth had clearly guessed wrong, for lobster à la Riseholme à la Mapp had been found to consist of something resembling lumps of india-rubber (so tough that the teeth positively bounced away from them on contact) swimming in a dubious pink gruel, and both of them left a great deal on their plates, concealed as far as possible under their knives and forks, though their hostess continued manfully to chew, till her jaw-muscles gave out. Then Elizabeth had had recourse to underhand methods. Lucia had observed her more than once in the High Street, making herself suspiciously pleasant to her cook, and from the window of the garden-room just before her influenza, she had seen her at the back door of Mallards again in conversation with the lady of the kitchen. On this occasion, with an unerring conviction in her mind, she had sent for her cook and asked her what Miss Mapp wanted. It was even so: Elizabeth’s ostensible inquiry was for an egg-whisk, which she had left by mistake at Mallards three months ago, but then she had unmasked her batteries, and, actually fingering a bright half-crown, had asked point-blank for the recipe of this lobster à la Riseholme. The cook had given her a polite but firm refusal, and Lucia was now more determined than
ever that Elizabeth should never know the exquisite secret. She naturally felt that it was beneath her to take the slightest notice of this low and paltry attempt to obtain by naked bribery a piece of private knowledge, and she never let Elizabeth know that she was cognizant of it.
During the morning before Lucia’s luncheon-party a telegram had come for Georgie from Colonel Cresswell making a firm and very satisfactory offer for his house at Riseholme, unfurnished. That had made him really busy: first he had to see Foljambe and tell her (under seal of secrecy, for he had his little plot of teasing Lucia in mind) that he was proposing to settle in Tilling. Foljambe was very pleased to hear it, and in a burst of most unusual feeling, had said that it would have gone to her heart to leave his service, after so many harmonious years, when he went back to Riseholme, and that she was very glad to adopt the plan, which she had agreed to, when it was supposed that they would all go back to Riseholme together. She would do her work all day in Georgie’s house, and retire in the evening to the connubialities of the garage at Grebe. When this affecting interview was over, she went back to her jobs, and again Georgie heard her singing as she cleaned the silver. ‘So that’s beautiful,’ he said to himself, ‘and the cloud has passed for ever. Now I must instantly see about getting a house here.’
He hurried out. There was still an hour before he was due at the lobster lunch. Though he had left the seaside twenty-four hours ago, he put on his yachtsman’s cap and, walking on air, set off for the house-agents’. Of all the houses in the place which he had seen, he was sure that none would suit him as well as this dear little Mallards Cottage which he now occupied; he liked it, Foljambe liked it, they all liked it, but he had no idea whether he could get a lease from kippered Isabel. As he crossed the High Street, a wild hoot from a motor-horn just behind him gave him a dreadful fright, but he jumped nimbly for the pavement, reached it unhurt, and though his cap fell off and landed in a puddle, he was only thankful to have escaped being run down by Isabel Poppit on her motor-cycle. Her hair was like a twisted mop, her skin incredibly tanned, and mounted on her cycle she looked like a sort of modernized Valkyrie in rather bad repair… Meeting her just at this moment, when he was on his way to inquire about Mallards Cottage, seemed a good omen to Georgie, and he picked up his cap and ran back across the street, for in her natural anxiety to avoid killing him she had swerved into a baker’s cart, and had got messed up in the wheels.
‘I do apologize, Miss Poppit,’ he said. ‘Entirely my fault for not looking both ways before I crossed.’
‘No harm done,’ said she. ‘Oh, your beautiful cap. I am sorry. But after all the wonderful emptiness and silence among the sand-dunes, a place like a town seems to me a positive nightmare.’
‘Well, the emptiness and silence does seem to suit you,’ said Georgie, gazing in astonishment at her mahogany face. ‘I never saw anybody looking so well.’
Isabel, with a tug of her powerful arms, disentangled her cycle.
‘It’s the simple life,’ said she, shaking her hair out of her eyes. ‘Never again will I live in a town. I have taken the bungalow I am in now for six months more, and I only came in to Tilling to tell the house-agent to get another tenant for Mallards Cottage, as I understand that you’re going back to Riseholme at the end of this month.’
Georgie had never felt more firmly convinced that a wise and beneficent Providence looked after him with the most amiable care.
‘And I was also on my way to the house-agents’,’ he said, ‘to see if I could get a lease of it.’
‘Gracious! What a good thing I didn’t run over you just now,’ said Isabel, with all the simplicity derived from the emptiness and silence of sand-dunes. ‘Come on to the agents’.’
Within half an hour the whole business was as good as settled. Isabel held a lease from her mother of Mallards Cottage, which had five years yet to run, and she agreed to transfer this to Georgie, and store her furniture. He had just time to change into his new mustard-coloured suit with its orange tie and its topaz tie-pin, and arrived at the luncheon-party in the very highest spirits. Besides, there was his talk with Lucia when other guests had gone, to look forward to. How he would tease her about settling in London!
Though Tilling regarded the joyful prospect of Lucia’s never going away again with certain reservations, and, in the case of Elizabeth, with nothing but reservations, her guests vied with each other in the fervency of their self-congratulations, and Elizabeth outdid them all, as she took into her mouth small fragments of lobster, in the manner of a wine-taster, appraising subtle flavours. There was cheese, there were shrimps, there was cream: there were so many things that she felt like Adam giving names to the innumerable procession of different animals. She had helped herself so largely that when the dish came to Georgie there was nothing left but a little pink juice, but he hardly minded at all, so happy had the events of the morning made him. Then when Elizabeth felt that she would choke if she said anything more in praise of Lucia, Mr Wyse took it up, and Georgie broke in and said it was cruel of them all to talk about the delicious busy winter they would have, when they all knew that he would not be here any longer but back at Riseholme. In fact, he rather overdid his lamentations, and Lucia, whose acute mind detected the grossest insincerity in Elizabeth’s raptures, began to wonder whether Georgie for some unknown reason was quite as woeful as he professed to be. Never had he looked more radiant, not a shadow of disappointment had come over his face when he inspected the casserole that had once contained his favourite dish, and found nothing left for him. There was something up—what on earth could it be? Had Foljambe jilted Cadman?—and just as Elizabeth was detecting flavours in the mysterious dish, so Lucia was trying to arrive at an analysis of the gay glad tones in which Georgie expressed his misery.
‘It’s too tarsome of you all to go on about the lovely things you’re going to do,’ he said. ‘Callisthenic classes and Homer and bridge, and poor me far away, I shall tell myself every morning that I hate Tilling; I shall say like Coué, “Day by day in every way, I dislike it more and more,” until I’ve convinced myself that I shall be glad to go.’
Mr Wyse made him a beautiful bow.
‘We too shall miss you very sadly, Mr Pillson,’ he said, ‘and for my part I shall be tempted to hate Riseholme for taking from us one who has so endeared himself to us.’
‘I ask to be allowed to associate myself with those sentiments,’ said Major Benjy, whose contempt for Georgie and his sketches and his needlework had been intensified by the sight of his yachting cap, which he had pronounced to be only fit for a popinjay. It had been best to keep on good terms with him while Lucia was at Mallards, for he might poison her mind about himself, and now that he was going, there was no harm in these handsome remarks. Then the Padre said something Scotch and sympathetic and regretful, and Georgie found himself, slightly to his embarrassment, making bows and saying ‘thank you’ right and left in acknowledgment of these universal expressions of regret that he was so soon about to leave them. It was rather awkward, for within a few hours they would all know that he had taken Mallards Cottage unfurnished for five years, which did not look like an immediate departure. But this little deception was necessary if he was to bring off his joke against Lucia, and make her think that he meant to settle in London. And after all, since everybody seemed so sorry that (as they imagined) he was soon to leave Tilling, they ought to be very much pleased to find that he was doing nothing of the kind.
The guests dispersed soon after lunch and Georgie, full of mischief and naughtiness, lingered with his hostess in the garden-room. All her gimlet glances during lunch had failed to fathom his high good humour: here was he on the eve of parting with his Foljambe and herself, and yet his face beamed with content. Lucia was in very good spirits also, for she had seen Elizabeth’s brow grow more and more furrowed as she strove to find a formula for the lobster.
‘What a lovely luncheon-party, although I got no lobster at all,’ said Georgie, as he settled himself for his te
asing. ‘I did enjoy it. And Elizabeth’s rapture at your stopping here! She must have an awful blister on her tongue.’
Lucia sighed.
‘Sapphira must look to her laurels, poor thing,’ she observed pensively. ‘And how sorry they all were that you are going away.’
‘Wasn’t it nice of them?’ said Georgie. ‘But never mind that now: I’ve got something wonderful to tell you. I’ve never felt happier in my life, for the thing I’ve wanted for so many years can be managed at last. You will be pleased for my sake.’
Lucia laid a sympathetic hand on his. She felt that she had shown too little sympathy with one who was to lose his parlourmaid and his oldest friend so soon. But the gaiety with which he bore his double stroke was puzzling…
‘Dear Georgie,’ she said, ‘anything that makes you happy makes me happy. I am rejoiced that something of the sort has occurred. Really rejoiced. Tell me what it is instantly.’
Georgie drew a long breath. He wanted to give it out all in a burst of triumph like a fanfare.
‘Too lovely,’ he said. ‘Colonel Cresswell has bought my house at Riseholme—such a good price—and now at last I shall be able to settle in London. I was just as tired of Riseholme as you, and now I shall never see it again or Tilling either. Isn’t it a dream? Riseholme, stuffy little Mallards Cottage, all things of the past! I shall have a nice little home in London, and you must promise to come up and stay with me sometimes. How I looked forward to telling you! Orchestral concerts at Queen’s Hall, instead of our fumbling little arrangements of Mozartino for four hands. Pictures, a club if I can afford it, and how nice to think of you so happy down at Tilling! As for all the fuss I made yesterday about losing Foljambe, I can’t think why it seemed to me so terrible.’
Lucia gave him one more gimlet glance, and found she did not believe a single word he was saying except as regards the sale of his house at Riseholme. All the rest must be lies, for the Foljambe-wound could not possibly have healed so soon. But she instantly made up her mind to pretend to believe him, and clapped her hands for pleasure.