Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “No, I don’t want to come in,” she said. “But, eureka, Georgie. Ho trovato: ho ben trovato!”

  “What have you found?” called Georgie, sitting up in his bath.

  “It. Me. My banquet. You and my banquet. I’ll tell you at dinner. Be quick.”

  “Probably she’ll let me hand the cheese,” thought Georgie, still feeling morose. “I’m in no hurry to hear that.”

  He padded back to his bedroom in his dressing-gown and green morocco slippers. A parcel had arrived for him while he was at his bath, and Foljambe, the parlour-maid valet had put it on his pink bed-quilt.

  “It must be my new dinner suit,” he said to himself. “And with all this worry I’d quite forgotten about it.”

  He cut the string and there it was: jacket and waistcoat and trousers of ruby-coloured velvet, with synthetic-onyx buttons, quite superb. It was Lucia’s birthday present to him; he was to order just what dinner-suit he liked, and the bill was to be sent to her. She knew nothing more, except that he had told her that it would be something quite out of the common and that Tilling would be astonished. He was thrilled with its audacious beauty.

  “Now let me think,” he meditated. “One of my pleated shirts, and a black butterfly tie, and my garnet solitaire. And my pink vest. Nobody will see it, but I shall know it’s there. And red socks. Or daren’t I?”

  He swiftly invested himself in this striking creation. It fitted beautifully in front, and he rang the bell for Foljambe to see if it was equally satisfactory behind. Her masterful knock sounded on the door, and he said come in.

  Foljambe gave a shrill ejaculation.

  “Lor!” she said. “Something fancy-dress, sir?”

  “Not at all,” said Georgie. “My new evening suit. Isn’t it smart, Foljambe? Does it fit all right at the back?”

  “Seems to,” said Foljambe, pulling his sleeve. “Stand a bit straighter, sir. Yes, quite a good fit. Nearly gave me one.”

  “Don’t you like it?” asked Georgie anxiously.

  “Well, a bit of a shock, sir. I hope you won’t spill things on it, for it would be a rare job to get anything sticky out of the velvet, and you do throw your food about sometimes. But it is pretty now I begin to take it in.”

  Georgie went into his sitting-room next door, where there was a big mirror over the fireplace, and turned on all the electric lights. He got up on a chair, so that he could get a more comprehensive view of himself, and revolved slowly in the brilliant light. He was so absorbed in his Narcissism that he did not hear Lucia come out of her bedroom. The door was ajar, and she peeped in. She gave a strangled scream at the sight of a large man in a glaring red suit standing on a chair with his back to her. It was unusual. Georgie whisked round at her cry.

  “Look!” he said. “Your delicious present. There it was when I came from my bath. Isn’t it lovely?”

  Lucia recovered from her shock.

  “Positively Venetian, Georgie,” she said. “Real Titian.”

  “I think it’s adorable,” said Georgie, getting down. “Won’t Tilling be excited? Thank you a thousand times.”

  “And a thousand congratulations, Georgino,” she said. “Oh, and my discovery! I am a genius, dear. There’ll be a high table across the room at my banquet with two tables joining it at the corners going down the room. Me, of course, in the centre of the high table. We shall sit only on one side of these tables. And you can sit all by yourself exactly opposite me. Facing me. No official position, neither above or below the others. Just the Mayor’s husband close to her materially, but officially in the air, so to speak.”

  From below came the merry sound of little bells that announced dinner. Grosvenor, the other parlour-maid, was playing quite a sweet tune on them to-night, which showed she was pleased with life. When she was cross she made a snappy jangled discord.

  “That solves everything!” said Georgie. “Brilliant. How clever of you! I did feel a little hurt at the thought of not being there. Listen: Grosvenor’s happy, too. We’re all pleased.”

  He offered her his beautiful velvet arm, and they went downstairs.

  “And my garnet solitaire,” he said. “Doesn’t it go well with my clothes? I must tuck my napkin in securely. It would be frightful if I spilt anything. I am glad about the banquet.”

  “So am I, dear. It would have been horrid not to have had you there. But I had to reconcile the feelings of private life with the etiquette of public life. We must expect problems of the sort to arise while I’m Mayor—”

  “Such good fish,” said Georgie, trying to divert her from the eternal subject.

  Quite useless.

  “Excellent, isn’t it,” said Lucia. “In the time of Queen Elizabeth, Georgie, the Mayor of Tilling was charged with supplying fish for the Court. A train of pack-mules was despatched to London twice a week. What a wonderful thing if I could get that custom restored! Such an impetus to the fishermen here.”

  “The Court must have been rather partial to putrid fish,” said Georgie. “I shouldn’t care to eat a whiting that had been carried on a mule to London in hot weather, or in cold, for that matter.”

  “Ah, I should not mean to go back to the mules,” said Lucia, “though how picturesque to see them loaded at the river-bank, and starting on their Royal errand. One would use the railway. I wonder if it could be managed. The Royal Fish Express.”

  “Do you propose a special train full of soles and lobsters twice a week for Buckingham Palace or Royal Lodge?” he asked.

  “A refrigerating van would be sufficient. I daresay if I searched in the archives I should find that Tilling had the monopoly of supplying the Royal table, and that the right has never been revoked. If so, I should think a petition to the King: ‘Your Majesty’s loyal subjects of Tilling humbly pray that this privilege be restored to them’. Or perhaps some preliminary enquiries from the Directors of the Southern Railway first. Such prestige. And a steady demand would be a wonderful thing for the fishing industry.”

  “It’s got enough demand already,” said Georgie. “There isn’t too much fish for us here as it is.”

  “Georgie! Where’s your political economy? Demand invariably leads to supply. There would be more fishing-smacks built, more men would follow the sea. Unemployment would diminish. Think of Yarmouth and its immense trade. How I should like to capture some of it for our Tilling! I mustn’t lose sight of that among all the schemes I ponder over so constantly. . . . But I’ve had a busy day: let us relax a little and make music in the garden-room.”

  She rose, and her voice assumed a careless lightness.

  “I saw to-day,” she said, “in one of my old bound-up volumes of duets, an arrangement for four hands of Glazonov’s ‘Bacchanal’. It looked rather attractive. We might run through it.”

  Georgie had seen it, too, a week ago, and though most of Lucia’s music was familiar, he felt sure they had never tried this. He had had a bad cold in the head, and, not being up to their usual walk for a day or two, he had played over the bass part several times while Lucia was out taking her exercise: some day it might come in useful. Then this very afternoon, busy in the garden, he had heard a long-continued soft-pedalled tinkle, and rightly conjectured that Lucia was stealing a march on him in the treble part . . . Out they went to the garden-room, and Lucia found the ‘Bacchanal’. His new suit made him feel very kindly disposed.

  “You must take the treble, then,” he said. “I could never read that.”

  “How lazy of you, dear,” she said, instantly sitting down. “Well, I’ll try if you insist, but you mustn’t scold me if I make a mess of it.”

  It went beautifully. Odd trains of thought coursed through the heads of both. “Why is she such a hypocrite?” he wondered. “She was practising it half the afternoon.” . . . Simultaneously Lucia was saying to herself, “Georgie can’t be reading it. He must have tried it before.” At the end were mutual congratulations: each thought that the other had read it wonderfully well. Then bed-time. She kissed her hand to him
as she closed her bedroom door, and Georgie made a few revolutions in front of his mirror before divesting himself of the new suit. By a touching transference of emotions, Lucia had vivid dreams of heaving seas of ruby-coloured velvet, and Georgie of the new Cunard liner, Queen Mary, running aground in the river on a monstrous shoal of whiting and lobsters.

  There was an early autumnal frost in the night, though not severe enough to blacken the superb dahlias in Lucia’s garden and soon melting. The lawn was covered with pearly moisture when she and Georgie met at breakfast, and the red roofs of Tilling gleamed bright in the morning sun. Lucia had already engaged a shorthand and typewriting secretary to get used to her duties before the heavy mayoral correspondence began to pour in, but to-day the post brought nothing but a few circulars at once committed to the waste-paper basket. But it would not do to leave Mrs. Simpson completely idle, so, before setting out for the morning marketing, Lucia dictated invitations to Mrs. Bartlett and the Padre, to Susan and Mr. Wyse, to Elizabeth Mapp-Flint and Major Benjy for dinner and Bridge the following night. She would write in the invocations and signatures when she returned, and she apologized in each letter for the stress of work which had prevented her from writing with her own hand throughout.

  “Georgie, I shall have to learn typing myself,” she said as they started. “I can easily imagine some municipal crisis which would swamp Mrs. Simpson, quick worker though she is. Or isn’t there a machine called the dictaphone? . . . How deliciously warm the sun is! When we get back I shall make a water-colour sketch of my dahlias in the giardino segreto. Any night might see them blackened, and I should deplore not having a record of them. Ecco, there’s Irene beckoning to us from her window. Something about the fresco, I expect.”

  Irene Coles bounced out into the street.

  “Lucia, beloved one,” she cried. “It’s too cruel! That lousy Town Surveying Department refuses to sanction my fresco-design of Venus rising from the sea. Come into my studio and look at my sketch of it, which they have sent back to me. Goths and Vandals and Mrs. Grundys to a man and woman!”

  The sketch was very striking. A nude, well-nourished, putty-coloured female, mottled with green shadows, was balanced on an oyster shell, while a prizefighter, representing the wind and sprawling across the sky, propelled her with puffed cheeks up a river towards a red-roofed town on the shore which presented Tilling with pre-Raphaelite fidelity.

  “Dear me! Quite Botticellian!” said Lucia.

  “What?” screamed Irene. “Darling, how can you compare my great deep-bosomed Venus, fit to be the mother of heroes, with Botticelli’s anæmic flapper? What’ll the next generation in Tilling be like when my Venus gets ashore?”

  “Yes. Quite. So vigorous! So allegorical!” said Lucia. “But, dear Irene, do you want everybody to be reminded of that whenever they go up and down the street?”

  “Why not? What can be nobler than Motherhood?” asked Irene.

  “Nothing! Nothing!” Lucia assured her. “For a maternity home—”

  Irene picked up her sketch and tore it across.

  “I know what I shall do,” she said. “I shall turn my wondrous Hellenic goddess into a Victorian mother. I shall dress her in a tartan shawl and skirt and a bonnet with a bow underneath her chin and button-boots and a parasol. I shall give my lusty South Wind a frock-coat and trousers and a top-hat, and send the design back to that foul-minded Department asking if I have now removed all objectionable features. Georgie, when next you come to see me, you won’t need to blush.”

  “I haven’t blushed once!” said Georgie indignantly. “How can you tell such fibs?”

  “Dear Irene is so full of vitality,” said Lucia as they regained the street. “Such ozone! She always makes me feel as if I was out in a high wind, and I wonder if my hair is coming down. But so easily managed with a little tact — Ah! There’s Diva at her window. We might pop in on her for a minute, and I’ll break it to her about a State-opening for her tea-rooms . . . Take care, Georgie! There’s Susan’s Royce plunging down on us.”

  Mrs. Wyse’s huge car, turning into the High Street, drew up directly between them and Diva’s house. She let down the window and put her large round face where the window had been. As usual, she had on her ponderous fur-coat, but on her head was a quite new hat, to the side of which, like a cockade, was attached a trophy of bright blue, green and yellow plumage, evidently the wings, tail and breast of a small bird.

  “Can I give you a lift, dear?” she said in a mournful voice. “I’m going shopping in the High Street. You, too, of course, Mr. Georgie, if you don’t mind sitting in front.”

  “Many thanks, dear Susan,” said Lucia, “but hardly worth while, as we are in the High Street already.”

  Susan nodded sadly to them, put up the window, and signalled to her chauffeur to proceed. Ten yards brought her to the grocer’s, and the car stopped again.

  “Georgie, it was the remains of the budgerigar tacked to her hat,” said Lucia in a thrilled whisper as they crossed the street. “Yes, Diva: we’ll pop in for a minute.”

  “Wearing it,” said Diva in her telegraphic manner as she opened the front-door to them. “In her hat.”

  “Then is it true, Diva?” asked Lucia. “Did she sit down on her budgerigar?”

  “Definitely. I was having tea with her. Cage open. Budgerigar flitting about the room. A messy bird. Then Susan suddenly said ‘Tweet, tweet. Where’s my blue Birdie?’ Not a sign of it. ‘It’ll be all right,’ said Susan. ‘In the piano or somewhere.’ So we finished tea. Susan got up and there was blue Birdie. Dead and as flat as a pancake. We came away at once.”

  “Very tactful,” said Georgie. “But the head wasn’t on her hat, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Having it stuffed, I expect. To be added later between the wings. And what about those new clothes, Mr. Georgie?”

  “How on earth did you hear that?” said Georgie in great astonishment. How news travelled in Tilling! Only last night, dining at home, he had worn the ruby-coloured velvet for the first time, and now, quite early next morning, Diva had heard about it. Really things were known in Tilling almost before they happened.

  “My Janet was posting a letter, ten p.m.,” said Diva. “Foljambe was posting a letter. They chatted. And are they really red?”

  “You’ll see before long,” said Georgie, pleased to know that interest in his suit was blazing already. “Just wait and see.”

  All this conversation had taken place on Diva’s doorstep.

  “Come in for a minute,” she said. “I want to consult you about my parlour, when I make it into a tea-room. Shall take away those two big tables, and put in six little ones, for four at each. Then there’s the small room at the back full of things I could never quite throw away. Bird-cages. Broken coal-scuttles. Old towel-horses. I shall clear them out now, as there’s no rummage-sale coming on. Put that big cupboard there against the wall, and a couple of card tables. People might like a rubber after their tea if it’s raining. Me always ready to make a fourth if wanted. Won’t that be cosy?”

  “Very cosy indeed,” said Lucia. “But may you provide facilities for gambling in a public place, without risking a police-raid?”

  “Don’t see why not,” said Diva. “I may provide chess or draughts, and what’s to prevent people gambling at them? Why not cards? And you will come in your robes, won’t you, on Mayoring day, to inaugurate my tea-rooms?”

  “My dear, quite impossible,” said Lucia firmly. “As I told Georgie, I should have to be attended by my Aldermen and Councillors, as if it was some great public occasion. But I’ll come as Mrs. Pillson, and everyone will say that the Mayor performed the opening ceremony. But, officially, I must be incognita.”

  “Well, that’s something,” said Diva. “And may I put up some posters to say that Mrs. Pillson will open it?”

  “There can be no possible objection to that,” said Lucia with alacrity. “That will not invalidate my incognita. Just some big lettering at the top ‘Ye Olde Tea-House’, and
, if you think my name will help, big letters again for ‘Mrs. Pillson’ or ‘Mrs. Pillson of Mallards’. Quite. Any other news? I know that your Paddy hasn’t got mange.”

  “Nothing, I think. Oh yes, Elizabeth was in here just now, and asked me who was to be your Mayoress?”

  “My Mayoress?” asked Lucia. “Aren’t I both?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Diva. “But she says she’s sure all Mayors have Mayoresses.”

  “Poor Elizabeth: she always gets things muddled. Oh, Diva, will you — No nothing: I’m muddled, too. Goodbye, dear. All too cosy for words. A month to-day, then, for the opening. Georgie, remind me to put that down.”

  Lucia and her husband passed on up the street.

  “Such an escape!” she said. “I was on the point of asking Diva to dine and play bridge to-morrow, quite forgetting that I’d asked the Bartletts and the Wyses and the Mapp-Flints. You know, our custom of always asking husbands and wives together is rather Victorian. It dates us. I shall make innovations when the first terrific weeks of office are over. If we always ask couples, single people like Diva get left out.”

  “So shall I if the others do it, too,” remarked Georgie. “Look, we’ve nearly caught up Susan. She’s going into the post-office.”

  As Susan, a few yards ahead, stepped ponderously out of the Royce, her head brushed against the side of the door, and a wing from the cockade of bright feathers, insecurely fastened, fluttered down on to the pavement. She did not perceive her loss, and went in to the office. Georgie picked up the plume.

  “Better put it back on the seat inside,” whispered Lucia. “Not tactful to give it her in public. She’ll see it when she gets in.”

  “She may sit down on it again,” whispered Georgie.

  “Oh, the far seat: that’ll do. She can’t miss it.”

  He placed it carefully in the car, and they walked on.

  “It’s always a joy to devise those little unseen kindnesses,” said Lucia. “Poulterer’s first, Georgie. If all my guests accept for to-morrow, I had better bespeak two brace of partridges.”