Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Georgie, not attending much to his sewing, pricked his finger: Lucia read a little more Theophrastus with a wandering mind and moved to her writing-table, where a pile of letters was kept in place by a pretty paper-weight consisting of a small electroplate cricket bat propped against a football, which had been given her jointly by the two clubs of which she was President. The clock struck eleven: it surprised them both that the hours had passed so quickly: eleven was usually the close of their evening. But they sat on, for all was ready for the vital moment, and if it did not come now, when on earth could there be a more apt occasion? Yet who was to begin, and how?

  Georgie put down his work, for all his fingers were damp, and one was bloody. He remembered that he was a man. Twice he opened his mouth to speak, and twice he closed it again. He looked up at her, and caught her eye, and that gimlet-like quality in it seemed not only to pierce but to encourage. It bored into him for his good and for his eventual comfort. For the third time, and now successfully, he opened his mouth.

  “Lucia, I’ve got something I must say, and I hope you won’t mind. Has it ever occurred to you that — well — that we might marry?”

  She fiddled for a moment with the cricket bat and the football, but when she raised her eyes again, there was no doubt about the encouragement.

  “Yes, Georgie: unwomanly as it may sound,” she said, “it has. I really believe it might be an excellent thing. But there’s a great deal for us to think over first, and then talk over together. So let us say no more for the present. Now we must have our talk as soon as possible: some time to-morrow.”

  She opened her engagement book. She had bought a new one, since she had become a Town Councillor, about as large as an ordinary blotting-pad.

  “Dio, what a day!” she exclaimed. “Town Council at half-past ten, and at twelve I am due at the slope by the Norman tower to decide about the planting of my almond trees. Not in lines, I think, but scattered about: a little clump here, a single one there. . . . Then Diva comes to lunch. Did you hear? A cinder from a passing engine blew into her cook’s eye as she was leaning out of the kitchen window, poor thing. Then after lunch my football team are playing their opening match and I promised to kick off for them.”

  “My dear, how wonderfully adventurous of you!” exclaimed Georgie. “Can you?”

  “Quite easily and quite hard. They sent me up a football and I’ve been practising in the giardino segreto. Where were we? Come to tea, Georgie — no, that won’t do: my Mayor is bringing me the plans for the new artisan dwellings. It must be dinner then, and we shall have time to think it all over. Are you off? Buona notte, caro: tranquilli — dear me, what is the Italian for ‘sleep’? How rusty I am getting!”

  Lucia did not go back with him into the house, for there were some agenda for the meeting at half-past ten to be looked through. But just as she heard the front door shut on his exit, she remembered the Italian for sleep, and hurriedly threw up the window that looked on the street.

  “Sonni,” she called out, “Sonni tranquilli.”

  Georgie understood: and he answered in Italian.

  “I stessi a voi, I mean, te,” he brilliantly shouted.

  The half-espoused couple had all next day to let simmer in their heads the hundred arrangements and adjustments which the fulfilment of their romance would demand. Again and again George cast his doily from him in despair at the magnitude and intricacy of them. About the question of connubialities, he meant to be quite definite: it must be a sine qua non of matrimony, the first clause in the marriage treaty, that they should be considered absolutely illicit, and he need not waste thought over that. But what was to happen to his house, for presumably he would live at Mallards? And if so, what was to be done with his furniture, his piano, his bibelots? He could not bear to part with them, and Mallards was already full of Lucia’s things. And what about Foljambe? She was even more inalienable than his Worcester china, and Georgie felt that though life might be pretty much the same with Lucia, it could not be the same without Foljambe. Then he must insist on a good deal of independence with regard to the companionship his bride would expect from him. His mornings must be inviolably his own and also the time between tea and dinner as he would be with her from then till bed-time severed them. Again two cars seemed more than two people should require, but he could not see himself without his Armaud. And what if Lucia, intoxicated by her late success on the Stock Exchange, took to gambling and lost all her money? The waters on which they thought of voyaging together seemed sown with jagged reefs, and he went across to dinner the next night with a drawn and anxious face. He was rather pleased to see that Lucia looked positively haggard, for that showed that she realised the appalling conundrums that must be solved before any irretraceable step was taken. Probably she had got some more of her own.

  They settled themselves in the chairs where they had been so easy with each other twenty-four hours ago and Lucia with an air of determination, picked up a paper of scribbled memoranda from her desk.

  “I’ve put down several points we must agree over, Georgie,” she said.

  “I’ve got some, too, in my head,” said he.

  Lucia fixed her eyes on a corner of the ceiling, as if in a music-face, but her knotted brow showed it was not that.

  “I thought of writing to you about the first point, which is the most important of all,” she said, “but I found I couldn’t. How can I put it best? It’s this, Georgie. I trust that you’ll be very comfortable in the oak bedroom.”

  “I’m sure I shall,” interrupted Georgie eagerly.

  “ — and all that implies,” Lucia went on firmly.

  “No caresses of any sort: none of those dreadful little dabs and pecks Elizabeth and Benjy used to make at each other.”

  “You needn’t say anything more about that,” said he. “Just as we were before.”

  The acuteness of her anxiety faded from Lucia’s face.

  “That’s a great relief,” she said. “Now what is my next point? I’ve been in such a whirl all day and scribbled them down so hastily that I can’t read it. It looks like ‘Frabjious.’”

  “It sounds as if it might be Foljambe,” said Georgie. “I’ve been thinking a lot about her. I can’t part with her.”

  “Nor can I part with Grosvenor, as no doubt you will have realised. But what will their respective positions be? They’ve both bossed our houses for years. Which is to boss now? And will the other one consent to be bossed?”

  “I can’t see Foljambe consenting to be bossed,” said Georgie.

  “If I saw Grosvenor consenting to be bossed,” said Lucia, “I merely shouldn’t believe my eyes.”

  “Could there be a sort of equality?” suggested Georgie. “Something like King William III and Queen Mary?”

  “Oh, Georgie, I think there might be a solution there,” said Lucia. “Let us explore that. Foljambe will only be here during the day, just as she is now with you, and she’ll be your valet, and look after your rooms, for you must have a sitting-room of your own. I insist on that. You will be her province, Georgie, where she’s supreme. I shall be Grosvenor’s. I don’t suppose either of them wants to leave us, and they are friends. We’ll put it to them to-morrow, if we agree about the rest.”

  “Won’t it be awful if they don’t come to terms?” said Georgie. “What are we to do then?”

  “Don’t let’s anticipate trouble,” said Lucia. “Then let me see. ‘Mallards Cottage’ is my next entry. Naturally we shall live here.”

  “I’ve been worrying terribly about that,” said Georgie. “I quite agree we must live here, but I can’t let the Cottage with all my things. I don’t wish other people to sleep in my bed and that sort of thing. But if I let it unfurnished, what am I to do with them? My piano, my pictures and embroideries, my sofa, my particular armchair, my bed, my bibelots? I’ve got six occasional tables in my sitting-room, because I counted them. There’s no room for them here, and things go to pot if one stores them. Besides there are a lot of the
m which I simply can’t get on without. Heart’s blood.”

  A depressed silence followed, for Lucia knew what his household goods meant to Georgie. Then suddenly she sprang up, clapping her hands, and talking so weird a mixture of baby-language and Italian that none but the most intimate could have understood her at all.

  “Georgino!” she cried. “Ickle me vewy clever. Lucia’s got a molto bella idea. Lucia knows how Georgino loves his bibelotine. Tink a minute: shut oo eyes and tink! Well, Lucia no tease you any more . . . Georgino will have booful night-nursery here, bigger nor what he had in Cottagino. And booful salone bigger nor salone there. Now do you see?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Georgie firmly.

  Lucia abandoned baby and foreign tongues.

  “I’ll send all the furniture in your bedroom and sitting-room here across to Mallards Cottage, and you shall fill them with your own things. More than enough room for the curtains and pictures and occasional tables which you really love. You wouldn’t mind letting the Cottage if you had all your special things here?”

  “Well, you are clever!” said Georgie.

  An appreciative pause followed instead of that depressed silence, and Lucia referred to her notes.

  “‘Solitude’ is my next entry,” she said. “What can — Oh, I know. It sounds rather as if I was planning that we should see as little as possible of each other if and when we marry, but I don’t mean that. Only, with all the welter of business which my position in Tilling already entails (and it will get worse rather than better) I must have much time to myself. Naturally we shall entertain a good deal: those quaint Bridge parties and so on, for Tilling society will depend on us more than ever. But ordinarily, when we are alone, Georgie, I must have my mornings to myself, and a couple of hours at least before dinner. Close times. Of course nothing hard or fast about it; very likely we shall often make music together then. But you mustn’t think me unsociable if, as a rule, I have those hours to myself. My municipal duties, my boards and committees already take a great deal of time, and then there are all my private studies. A period of solitude every day is necessary for me. Is it not Goethe who says that we ripen in solitude?”

  “I quite agree with him if he does,” said Georgie. “I was going to speak about it myself if you hadn’t.”

  Most of the main dangers which threatened to render matrimony impossible had now been provided for and of these the Foljambe-Grosvenor complication alone remained. That, to be sure, was full of menace, for the problem that would arise if those two pillars of the house would not consent to support it in equal honour and stability, seemed to admit of no solution. But all that could be done at present was to make the most careful plans for the tactful putting of the proposition before William and Mary. It ought to be done simultaneously in both houses, and Lucia decided it would be quite legitimate if she implied (though not exactly stated) to Grosvenor that Foljambe thought the plan would work very well, while at the same moment Georgie was making the same implication to Foljambe. The earlier that was done, the shorter would be the suspense, and zero hour was fixed for ten next morning. It was late now, and Georgie went to bed. A random idea of kissing Lucia once, on the brow, entered his mind, but after what had been said about caresses, he felt she might consider it a minor species of rape.

  Next morning at a quarter past ten Georgie was just going to the telephone with brisk tread and beaming face, when Lucia rang him up. The sparkle in her voice convinced him that all was well even before she said “La domestica e molto contenta.”

  “So’s mine,” said Georgie.

  All obstacles to the marriage being now removed, unless Elizabeth thought of something and forbade the banns, there was no reason why it should not be announced. If Diva was told, no further dissemination was needful. Accordingly Lucia wrote a note to her about it, and by half-past eleven practically all Tilling knew. Elizabeth, on being told, said to Diva, “Dear, how can you repeat such silly stories?” So Diva produced the note itself, and Elizabeth without a particle of shame said, “Now my lips are unsealed. I knew a week ago. High time they were married, I should say.”

  Diva pressed her to explain precisely what she meant with such ferocity that Paddy showed his teeth, being convinced by a dog’s unfailing instinct that Elizabeth must be an enemy. So she explained that she had only meant that they had been devoted to each other for so long, and that neither of them would remain quite young much longer. Irene burst into tears when she heard it, but in all other quarters the news was received with great cordiality, the more so perhaps because Lucia had told Diva that they neither of them desired any wedding presents.

  The date and manner of the wedding much exercised the minds of the lovers. Georgie, personally, would have wished the occasion to be celebrated with the utmost magnificence. He strongly fancied the prospective picture of himself in frock-coat and white spats waiting by the north door of the church for the arrival of the bride. Conscious that for the rest of his years he would be overshadowed by the first citizeness of Tilling, his nature demanded one hour of glorious life, when the dominating rôle would be his, and she would promise to love, honour and obey, and the utmost pomp and circumstance ought to attend this brief apotheosis. To Lucia he put the matter rather differently.

  “Darling,” he said (they had settled to allow themselves this verbal endearment), “I think, no, I’m sure, that Tilling would be terribly disappointed if you didn’t allow this to be a great occasion. You must remember who you are, and what you are to Tilling.”

  Lucia was in no serious danger of forgetting that, but she had got another idea in her head. She sighed, as if she had herself just played the last chord of the first movement of the “Moonlight.”

  “Georgie,” she said, “I was turning up only yesterday the account of Charlotte Brontë’s wedding. Eight o’clock in the morning, and only two of her most intimate friends present. No one of the folk at Haworth even knew she was being married that day. So terribly chic somehow, when one remembers her world-wide fame. I am not comparing myself to Charlotte — don’t think that — but I have got a touch of her exquisite delicacy in shunning publicity. My public life, darling, must and does belong to Tilling, but not my private life.”

  “I can’t quite agree,” said Georgie. “It’s not the same thing, for all Tilling knows you’re going to be married, and it wouldn’t be fair to them. I should like you to ask the Bishop to come again in cope and mitre—”

  Lucia remembered that day of superb triumph.

  “Oh, Georgie, I wonder if he would come,” she said. “How Tilling enjoyed it before!”

  “Try anyhow. And think of your organ. Really it ought to make a joyful noise at your wedding. Mendelssohn’s Wedding March: tubas.”

  “No, darling, not that,” said Lucia. “So lascivious don’t you think?”

  “Well, Chopin’s then,” said Georgie.

  “No, that’s a funeral march,” said Lucia. “Most unsuitable.”

  “Well, some other march,” said Georgie. “And the Mayor and Corporation would surely attend. You’re a Town Councillor.”

  The example of Charlotte Brontë was fading out in Lucia’s mind, vanishing in a greater brightness.

  “And the Hastings Chronicle,” said Georgie pushing home his advantage. “That would be a big cutting for your book. A column at least.”

  “But there’ll be no wedding presents,” she said. “Usually most of it is taken up with wedding presents.”

  “Another score for you,” said Georgie ingeniously. “Tell your Mr. Meriton that because of the widespread poverty and unemployment you begged your friends not to spend their money on presents. They’d have been very meagre little things in any case: two packs of patience cards from Elizabeth and a pen-wiper from Benjy. Much better to have none.”

  Lucia considered these powerful arguments.

  “I allow you have shaken my, resolve, darling,” she said. “If you really think it’s my duty as—”

  “As a Town Councillor
and a fairy-godmother to Tilling, I do,” said he. “The football club, the cricket club. Everybody. I think you ought to sacrifice your personal feelings, which I quite understand.”

  That finished it.

  “I had better write to the Bishop at once then,” she said, “and give him a choice of dates. Bishops I am sure are as busy as I.”

  “Scarcely that,” said Georgie. “But it would be as well.”

  Lucia took a couple of turns up and down the garden-room. She waved her arms like Brunnhilde awakening on the mountain-top.

  “Georgie, I begin to visualize it all,” she said. “A procession from here would be out of place. But afterwards, certainly a reception in the garden-room, and a buffet in the dining-room. Don’t you think? But one thing I must be firm about. We must steal away afterwards. No confetti or shoes. We must have your motor at the front door, so that everyone will think we are driving away from there, and mine at the little passage into Porpoise Street, with the luggage on.”

  She sat down and took a sheet of writing paper.

  “And we must settle about my dress,” she said. “If we are to have this great show, so as not to disappoint Tilling, it ought to be up to the mark. Purple brocade, or something of the sort. I shall have it made here, of course: that good little milliner in the High Street. Useful for her . . . ‘Dear Lord Bishop’ is correct, is it not?”

  The Bishop chose the earliest of the proffered dates, and the Mayor and Corporation thereupon signified their intention of being present at the ceremony, and accepted Lucia’s invitation to the reception afterwards at Mallards. A further excitement for Tilling two days before the wedding was the sight of eight of the men whom now Lucia had come to call “her unemployed” moving in opposite directions between Mallards and the Cottage like laden ants, observing the rules of the road. They carried the most varied burdens: a bed in sections came out of Mallards passing on its way sections of another bed from the Cottage: bookcases were interchanged and wardrobes: an ant festooned with gay water-colour sketches made his brilliant progress towards Mallards, meeting another who carried prints of Mozart at the age of four improvising on the spinet and of Beethoven playing his own compositions to an apparently remorseful audience. A piano lurched along from the Cottage, first sticking in the doorway, and thus obstructing the progress of other ants laden with crockery vessels, water-jugs and basins and other meaner objects, who had to stand with their intimate burdens in the street, looking a shade self-conscious, till their way was clear. Curtains and rugs and fire-irons and tables and chairs were interchanged, and Tilling puzzled itself into knots to know what these things meant.