by E. F. Benson
“Of course that’s why,” she said. “As you get stronger, your beard will certainly get its colour back. Just a question of time. I think it’s beginning already.”
“But what am I to do till then?” asked Georgie. “Such an odd appearance.”
She laughed.
“Fancy asking a woman that!” she said. “Dye it, Georgino. Temporarily of course, just anticipating Nature. There’s that barber in Hastings you go to. Drive over there to-morrow.”
Actually, Georgie had got a big bottle upstairs of the precise shade, and had been touching up with it this morning. But Lucia’s suggestion of Hastings was most satisfactory. It implied surely that she had no cognizance of these hidden practices.
“I shouldn’t quite like to do that,” said he.
Lucia had by now developed her full horse-power in persuasiveness. She could quite understand (knowing Georgie) why he intended to shut himself up for another three weeks, sooner than shew himself to Tilling with auburn hair and a white beard (and indeed, though she personally had got used to it, he was a very odd object). Everyone would draw the inevitable conclusion that he dyed his hair, and though they knew it perfectly well already, the public demonstration of that fact would be intolerable to him, for the poor lamb evidently thought that this was a secret shared only by his bottle of hair-dye. Besides, she had now for over a fortnight concealed him like some Royalist giving a hiding place to King Charles, and while he had been there, she had not been able to ask a single one of her friends to the house, for fear they should catch a glimpse of him. Her kindliness revolted at the thought of his going back to his solitude, but she had had enough of his undiluted company. He had been a charming companion: she had even admitted to herself that it would be pleasant to have him always here, but not at the price of seeing nobody else. . . . She opened the throttle.
“But how perfectly unreasonable,” she cried. “Dyeing it is only a temporary measure till it resumes its colour. And the improvement! My dear, I never saw such an improvement. Diva’s not in it! And how can you contemplate going back to solitary confinement, for indeed it’s that, for weeks and weeks more, and then at the end to scrap it? The distinction, Georgie, the dignity, and, to be quite frank, the complete disappearance of your chin, which was the one weak feature in your face. And it’s in your power to be a living Vandyck masterpiece, and you’re hesitating whether you shall madly cast away, as the hymn says, that wonderful chance. Hastings to-morrow, directly after breakfast, I implore you. It will be dry by lunch-time, won’t it? Why, a woman with the prospect of improving her appearance so colossally would be unable to sleep a wink to-night from sheer joy. Oh, amico mio,” she said, lapsing into the intimate dialect, “Oo will vex povera Lucia vewy, vewy much if you shave off vostra bella barba. Di grazia! Georgie.”
“Me must fink,” said Georgie. He left his chair and gazed once more at Gelasius and then at himself, and wondered if he had the nerve to appear without warning in High Street even if his beard was auburn.
“I believe you’re right,” he said at length. “Fancy all this coming out of my shingles. But it’s a tremendous step to take . . . Yes, I’ll do it. And I shall be able to come to your birthday party after all.”
“It wouldn’t be a birthday party without you,” said Lucia warmly.
Georgie’s cook having returned, he went back to his own house after the operation next morning. He had taken a little hand-glass with him to Hastings, and all the way home he had constantly consulted it in order to get used to himself, for he felt as if a total stranger with a seventeenth century face was sharing the car with him, and his agitated consciousness suggested that anyone looking at him at all closely would conclude that this lately discovered Vandyck (like the Carlisle Holbein) was a very doubtful piece. It might be after Vandyck, but assuredly a very long way after. Foljambe opened the door of Mallards Cottage to him, and she considerably restored his shattered confidence. For the moment her jaw dropped, as if she had been knocked out, at the shock of this transformation, but then she recovered completely, and beamed up at him.
“Well, that is a pleasant change, sir,” she said, “from your white beard, if you’ll pardon me,” and Georgie hurried upstairs to get an ampler view of himself in the big mirror in his bedroom than the hand-glass afforded. He then telephoned to Lucia to say that the operation was safely over and she promised to come up directly after lunch and behold.
The nerve-strain had tired him and so did the constant excursions upstairs to get fresh impressions of himself. Modern costume was a handicap, but a very pretty little cape of his with fur round the neck had a Gelasian effect, and when Lucia arrived he came down in this. She was all applause: she walked slowly round him to get various points of view, ejaculating, “My dear, what an improvement,” or “My dear, what an improvement,” to which Georgie replied, “Do you really like it?” until her iteration finally convinced him that she was sincere. He settled to rest for the remainder of the day after these fatigues, and to burst upon all Tilling at the marketing hour next morning.
“And what do you seriously think they’ll all think?” he asked. “I’m terribly nervous as you may imagine. It would be good of you if you’d pop in to-morrow morning, and walk down with me. I simply couldn’t pass underneath the garden-room window, with Elizabeth looking out, alone.”
“Ten forty-five, Georgie,” she said. “What an improvement!”
The afternoon and evening dragged after she was gone. It was pleasant to see his bibelots again, but he missed Lucia’s companionship. Intimate as they had been for many years, they had never before had each other’s undivided company for so long. A book, and a little conversation with Foljambe made dinner tolerable, but after that she went home to her Cadman, and he was alone. He polished up the naughty snuffbox, he worked at his petit-point shepherdess. He had stripped her nakeder than Eve, and replaced her green robe with pink, and now instead of looking like a stick of asparagus she really might have been a young lady who, for reasons of her own, preferred to tend her sheep with nothing on; but he wanted to show her to somebody and he could hardly discuss her with his cook. Or a topic of interest occurred to him, but there was no one to share it with, and he played beautifully on his piano, but nobody congratulated him. It was dreary work to be alone, though no doubt he would get used to it again, and dreary to go up to bed with no chattering on the stairs. Often he used to linger with Lucia at her bedroom door, finishing their talk, and even go in with her by express invitation. To-night he climbed up stairs alone, and heard his cook snoring.
Lucia duly appeared next morning, and they set off under the guns of the garden-room window. Elizabeth was there as usual, and after fixing on them for a moment her opera glass which she used for important objects at a distance, she gave a squeal that caused Benjy to drop the Financial Post which recorded the ruinous fall of two shillings in Siriami.
“Mr. Georgie’s got a beard,” she cried, and hurried to get her hat and basket and follow them down to the High Street. Diva, looking out of her window was the next to see him, and without the hint Elizabeth had had of observing his exit from his own house quite failed to recognise him at first. She had to go through an addition sum in circumstantial evidence before she arrived at his identity: he was with Lucia, he was of his own height and build, the rest of his face was the same and he had on the well-known little cape with the fur collar. Q.E.D. She whistled to Pat, she seized her basket, and taking a header into the street ran straight into Elizabeth who was sprinting down from Mallards.
“He’s come out. Mr. Georgie. A beard,” she said.
Elizabeth was out of breath with her swift progress.
“Oh yes, dear,” she panted. “Didn’t you know? Fancy! Where have they gone?”
“Couldn’t see. Soon find them. Come on.”
Elizabeth, chagrined at not being able to announce the news to Diva, instantly determined to take the opposite line, and not shew the slightest interest in this prodigious transformation.
>
“But why this excitement, dear?” she said. “I cannot think of anything that matters less. Why shouldn’t Mr. Georgie have a beard? If you had one now—”
A Sinaitic trumpet-blast from Susan’s Royce made them both leap on to the pavement, as if playing Tom Tiddler’s ground.
“But don’t you remember—” began Diva almost before alighting— “there we’re safe — don’t you remember the man with a white beard whom I saw in Lucia’s car? Must be same man. You said it was Mr. Montagu Norman first and then Lucia’s gardener disguised. The one we watched for, you at your window and me in Church Square.”
“Grammar, dear Diva. ‘I’ not ‘me’,” interrupted Elizabeth to gain time, while she plied her brain with crucial questions. For if Diva was right, and the man in Lucia’s car had been Georgie (white beard), he must have been driving back to Mallards Cottage in Lucia’s car from somewhere. Could he have been living at Grebe all the time while he pretended (or Lucia pretended for him) to have been at home too ill to see anybody? But if so, why, on some days, had his house appeared to be inhabited, and on some days completely deserted? Certainly Georgie (auburn beard) had come out of it this morning with Lucia. Had they been staying with each other alternately? Had they been living in sin? . . . Poor shallow Diva had not the slightest perception of these deep and probably grievous matters. Her feather-pated mind could get no further that the colour of beards. Before Diva could frame an adequate reply to this paltry grammatical point a positive eruption of thrills occurred. Lucia and Georgie came out of the post office, Paddy engaged in a dog fight, and the Padre and Evie Bartlett emerged from the side street opposite, and, as if shot from a catapult, projected themselves across the road just in front of Susan’s motor.
“Oh, dear me, they’ll be run over!” cried Diva. “PADDY! And there are Mr. Georgie and Lucia. What a lot of things are happening this morning!”
“Diva, you’re a little overwrought,” said Elizabeth with kindly serenity. “What with white beards and brown beards and motor accidents . . . Oh, voilà! There’s Susan actually got out of her car, and she’s almost running across the road to speak to Mr. Georgie, and quaint Irene in shorts. What a fuss! For goodness sake let’s be dignified and go on with our shopping. The whole thing has been staged by Lucia, and I won’t be a super.”
“But I must go and say I’m glad he’s better,” said Diva.
“Certainement, dear, if you happen to think he’s been ill. I believe it’s all a hoax.”
But she spoke to the empty air for Diva had thumped Paddy in the ribs with her market-basket and was whizzing away to the group on the pavement where Georgie was receiving general congratulations on his recovery and his striking appearance. The verdict was most flattering, and long after his friends had gazed their fill he continued to walk up and down the High Street and pop into shops where he wanted nothing, in order that his epiphany which he had been so nervous about, and which he found purely enjoyable, might be manifest to all. For a long time Elizabeth, determined to take no part in a show which she was convinced was run by Lucia, succeeded in avoiding him, but at last he ran her to earth in the greengrocer’s. She examined the quality of the spinach till her back ached, and then she had to turn round and face him.
“Lovely morning, isn’t it, Mr. Georgie,” she said. “So pleased to see you about again. Sixpennyworth of spinach, please, Mr. Twistevant. Looks so good!” and she hurried out of the shop, still unconscious of his beard.
“Tarsome woman,” thought Georgie. “If there is a fly anywhere about she is sure to put it in somebody’s ointment . . .” But there had been so much ointment on the subject that he really didn’t much mind about Elizabeth’s fly.
CHAPTER IV.
Elizabeth Mapp-Flint had schemes for her husband and meant to realize them. As a bachelor, with an inclination to booze and a very limited income, inhabiting that small house next to Mallards, it was up to him, if he chose, to spend the still robust energies of his fifty-five years in playing golf all day and getting slightly squiffy in the evening. But his marriage had given him a new status: he was master, though certainly not mistress, of the best house in Tilling, he was, through her, a person of position, and it was only right that he should have a share in municipal government. The elections to the Town Council were coming on shortly, and she had made up her mind, and his for him, that he must stand. The fact that, if elected, he would make it his business to get something done about Susan Wyse’s motor causing a congestion of traffic every morning in the High Street was not really a leading motive. Elizabeth craved for the local dignity which his election would give not only to him but her, and if poor Lucia (always pushing herself forward) happened to turn pea-green with envy, that would be her misfortune and not Elizabeth’s fault. As yet the programme which he should present to the electors was only being thought out, but municipal economy (Major Mapp-Flint and Economy) with reduction of rates would be the ticket.
The night of Lucia’s birthday party was succeeded by a day of pelting rain, and, no golf being possible, Elizabeth, having sent her cook (she had a mackintosh) to do the marketing for her, came out to the garden-room after breakfast for a chat. She always knocked at the door, opening it a chink and saying, “May I come in, Benjy-boy?” in order to remind him of her nobility in giving it him. To-day a rather gruff voice answered her, for economy had certainly not been the ticket at Lucia’s party, and there had been a frightful profusion of viands and wine: really a very vulgar display, and Benjy had eaten enormously and drunk far more wine than was positively necessary for the quenching of thirst. There had been a little argument as they drove home, for he had insisted that there were fifty-one candles round the cake and that it had been a remarkably jolly evening: she said that there were only fifty candles, and that it was a very mistaken sort of hospitality which gave guests so much more than they wanted to eat or should want to drink. His lack of appetite at breakfast might prove that he had had enough to eat the night before to last him some hours yet, but his extraordinary consumption of tea could not be explained on the same analogy. But Elizabeth thought she had made sufficient comment on that at breakfast (or tea as far as he was concerned) and when she came in this morning for a chat, she had no intention of rubbing it in. The accusation, however, that he had not been able to count correctly up to fifty or fifty-one, still rankled in his mind, for it certainly implied a faintly camouflaged connection with sherry, champagne, port and brandy.
“Such a pity, dear,” she said brightly, “that it’s so wet. A round of golf would have done you all the good in the world. Blown the cobwebs away.”
To Benjy’s disgruntled humour, this seemed an allusion to the old subject, and he went straight to the point.
“There were fifty-one candles,” he said.
“Cinquante, Benjy,” she answered firmly. “She is fifty. She said so. So there must have been fifty.”
“Fifty-one. Candles I mean. But what I’ve been thinking over is that you’ve been thinking, if you follow me, that I couldn’t count. Very unjust. Perhaps you’ll say I saw a hundred next. Seeing double, eh? And why should a round of golf do me all the good in the world to-day? Not more good than any other day, unless you want me to get pneumonia.”
Elizabeth sat down on the seat in the window as suddenly as if she had been violently hit behind the knees, and put her handkerchief up to her eyes to conceal the fact that there was not a vestige of a tear there. As he was facing towards the fire he did not perceive this manœuvre and thought she had only gone to the window to make her usual morning observations. He continued to brood over the Financial Post, which contained the news that Siriami had been weak and Southern Prefs remarkably strong. These items were about equally depressing.
Elizabeth was doubtful as to what to do next. In the course of their married life, there had been occasional squalls, and she had tried sarcasm and vituperation with but small success. Benjy-boy had answered her back or sulked, and she was left with a sense of imperfect mastery.
This policy of being hurt was a new one, and since the first signal had not been noticed she hoisted a second one and sniffed.
“Got a bit of a cold?” he asked pacifically.
No answer, and he turned round.
“Why, what’s wrong?” he said.
“And there’s a jolie chose to ask,” said Elizabeth with strangled shrillness. “You tell me I want you to catch pneumonia, and then ask what’s wrong. You wound me deeply.”
“Well, I got annoyed with your nagging at me that I couldn’t count. You implied I was squiffy just because I had a jolly good dinner. And there were fifty-one candles.”
“It doesn’t matter if there were fifty-one million,” cried Elizabeth. “What matters is that you spoke to me very cruelly. I planned to make you so happy, Benjy, by giving up my best room to you and all sorts of things, and all the reward I get is to be told one day that I ought to have let Lucia lead me by the nose and almost the next that I hoped you would die of pneumonia.”
He came across to the window.
“Well, I didn’t mean that,” he said. “You’re sarcastic, too, at times and say monstrously disagreeable things to me.”
“Oh, that’s a wicked lie,” said Elizabeth violently. “Never have I spoken disagreeably to you. Jamais! Firmly sometimes, but always for your good. Toujours! Never another thought in my head but your true happiness.”
Benjy was rather alarmed: hysterics seemed imminent.
“Yes, girlie, I know that,” he said soothingly. “Nothing the matter? Nothing wrong?”
She opened her mouth once or twice like a gasping fish, and recovered her self-control.
“Nothing, dear, that I can tell you yet,” she said. “Don’t ask me. But never say I want you to get pneumonia again. It hurt me cruelly. There! All over! Look, there’s Mr. Georgie coming out in this pelting rain. Do you know, I like his beard, though I couldn’t tell him so, except for that odd sort of sheen on it, like the colours on cold boiled beef. But I daresay that’ll pass off. Oh, let’s put up the window and ask him how many candles there were . . . Good morning, Mr. Georgie. What a lovely, no, disgusting morning, but what a lovely evening yesterday! Do you happen to know for certain how many candles there were on Lucia’s beautiful cake?”