by E. F. Benson
“Wish they’d come sooner,” she said, “to see the ceremony. Do wait a bit; if they ease off we can finish our game.”
She hurried away. A few minutes afterwards she opened the door and said in a thrilling whisper, “Fourteen shilling ones, and two eighteen-penny’s.”
“Splendid!” said everybody, and Susan began telling them about her automatic script.
“I sit there with my eyes shut and my pencil in my hand,” she said, “and Blue Birdie on the table by me. I get a sort of lost feeling, and then Blue Birdie seems to say ‘Tweet, tweet’, and I say ‘Good morning, dear’. Then my pencil begins to move. I never know what it writes. A queer, scrawling hand, not a bit like mine.”
The door opened and Diva’s face beamed redly.
“Still twelve shilling ones,” she said, “though six of the first lot have gone. Two more eighteen-penny, but the cream is getting low, and Janet’s had to add milk.”
“Where had I got to?” said Susan. “Oh, yes. It goes on writing till Blue Birdie seems to say ‘Tweet, tweet’ again, and that means it’s finished and I say ‘Good-bye, dear’.”
“What sort of things does it write?” asked Lucia.
“All sorts. This morning it kept writing mère over and over again.”
“That’s very strange,” said Lucia eagerly. “Very. I expect Blue Birdie wants to say something to me.”
“No,” said Susan. “Not your sort of Mayor. The French word mère, just as if Blue Birdie said ‘Mummie’. Speaking to me evidently.”
This did not seem to interest Lucia.
“And anything of value?” she asked.
“It’s all of value,” said Susan.
A slight crash sounded from the tea-room.
“Only a tea-cup,” said Diva, looking in again. Rather like breaking a bottle of wine when you launch a ship.”
“Would you like me to show myself for a minute?” asked Lucia. “I will gladly walk through the room if it would help.”
“So good of you, but I don’t want any help except in handling things. Besides, I told the reporter of the Argus that you had had your tea, and were playing cards in here.”
“Oh, not quite wise, Diva,” said Lucia. “Tell him I wasn’t playing for money. Think of the example.”
“Afraid he’s gone,” said Diva. “Besides, it wouldn’t be true. Two of your Councillors here just now. Shillings. Didn’t charge them. Advertisement.”
The press of customers eased off, and, leaving Janet to deal with the remainder, Diva joined them, clinking a bag of bullion.
“Lots of tips,” she said. “I never reckoned on that. Mostly twopences, but they’ll add up. I must just count the takings, and then let’s finish the rubber.”
The takings exceeded all expectation; quite a pile of silver; a pyramid of copper.
“What will you do with all that money now the banks are closed?” asked Georgie lightly. “Such a sum to have in the house. I should bury it in the garden.”
Diva’s hand gave an involuntary twitch as she swept the coppers into a bag. Odd that he should say that! “Safe enough,” she replied. “Paddy sleeps in my room, now that I know he hasn’t got mange.”
The Mayoral banquet followed in the evening. Unfortunately, neither the Lord Lieutenant nor the Bishop nor the Member of Parliament were able to attend, but they sent charming letters of regret, which Lucia read before her Chaplain, the Padre, said Grace. She wore her mayoral chain of office round her neck, and her chain of inherited seed-pearls in her hair, and Georgie, as arranged, sat alone on the other side of the table directly opposite her. He was disadvantageously placed with regard to supplies of food and drink, for the waiter had to go round the far end of the side-tables to get at him, but he took extra large helpings when he got the chance, and had all his wine-glasses filled. He wore on the lapel of his coat a fine green and white enamel star, which had long lain among his bibelots, and which looked like a foreign order. At the far end of the room was a gallery, from which ladies, as if in purdah, were allowed to look on. Elizabeth sat in the front row, and waggled her hand at the Mayor, whenever Lucia looked in her direction, in order to encourage her. Once, when a waiter was standing just behind Lucia, Elizabeth felt sure that she had caught her eye, and kissed her hand to her. The waiter promptly responded, and the Mayoress, blushing prettily, ceased to signal. . . . There were flowery speeches made and healths drunk, and afterwards a musical entertainment. The Mayor created a precedent by contributing to this herself and giving (as the Hampshire Argus recorded in its next issue) an exquisite rendering on the piano of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. It produced a somewhat pensive effect, and she went back to her presiding place again amid respectful applause and a shrill, solitary cry of “Encore!” from Elizabeth. The spirits of her guests revived under the spell of lighter melodies, and at the end Auld Lang Syne was sung with crossed hands by all the company, with the exception of Georgie, who had no neighbours. Lucia swept regal curtsies to right and left, and a loop of the seed pearls in her hair got loose and oscillated in front of her face.
The Mayor and her Prince Consort drove back to Mallards, Lucia strung up to the highest pitch of triumph, Georgie intensely fatigued. She put him through a catechism of self-glorification in the garden-room.
“I think I gave them a good dinner,” she said. “And the wine was excellent, wasn’t it?”
“Admirable,” said Georgie.
“And my speech. Not too long?”
“Not a bit. Exactly right.”
“I thought they drank my health very warmly. Non e vero?”
“Very. Molto,” said Georgie.
Lucia struck a chord on the piano before she closed it.
“Did I take the Moonlight a little too quick?” she asked.
“No. I never heard you play it better.”
“I felt the enthusiasm tingling round me,” she said. “In the days of horse-drawn vehicles, I am sure they would have taken my horses out of the shafts and pulled us up home. But impossible with a motor.”
Georgie yawned.
“They might have taken out the carburetter,” he said wearily.
She glanced at some papers on her table.
“I must be up early to-morrow,” she said, “to be ready for Mrs. Simpson. . . . A new era, Georgie. I seem to see a new era for our dear Tilling.”
CHAPTER IV.
Lucia did not find her new duties quite as onerous as she expected, but she made them as onerous as she could. She pored over plans for new houses which the Corporation was building, and having once grasped the difference between section and elevation was full of ideas for tasteful weathercocks, lightning conductors and balconies. With her previous experience in Stock Exchange transactions to help her, she went deeply into questions of finance and hit on a scheme of borrowing money at three and a half per cent. for a heavy outlay for the renewal of drains, and investing it in some thoroughly sound concern that brought in four and a half per cent. She explained this masterpiece to Georgie.
“Say we borrow ten thousand pounds at three and a half,” she said, “the interest on that will be three hundred and fifty pounds a year. We invest it, Georgie, — follow me closely here — at four and a half, and it brings us in four hundred and fifty pounds a year. A clear gain of one hundred pounds.”
“That does seem brilliant,” said Georgie. “But wait a moment. If you re-invest what you borrow, how do you pay for the work on your drains?”
Lucia’s face grew corrugated with thought.
“I see what you’re driving at, Georgie,” she said slowly. “Very acute of you. I must consider that further before I bring my scheme before the Finance Committee. But in my belief — of course this is strictly private — the work on the drains is not so very urgent. We might put it off for six months, and in the meantime reap our larger dividends. I’m sure there’s something to be done on those lines.”
Then with a view to investigating the lighting of the streets, she took G
eorgie out for walks after dinner on dark and even rainy evenings.
“This corner now,” she said as the rain poured down on her umbrella. “A most insufficient illumination. I should never forgive myself if some elderly person tripped up here in the dark and stunned himself. He might remain undiscovered for hours.”
“Quite,” said Georgie, “But this is very cold-catching. Let’s get home. No elderly person will come out on such a night. Madness.”
“It is a little wet,” said Lucia, who never caught cold. “I’ll go to look at that alley by Bumpus’s buildings another night, for there’s a memorandum on Town Development plans waiting for me, which I haven’t mastered. Something about residential zones and industrial zones, Georgie. I mustn’t permit a manufactory to be opened in a residential zone: for instance, I could never set up a brewery or a blacksmith’s forge in the garden at Mallards—”
“Well, you don’t want to, do you?” said Georgie.
“The principle, dear, is the interesting thing. At first sight it looks rather like a curtailment of the liberty of the individual, but if you look, as I am learning to do, below the surface, you will perceive that a blacksmith’s forge in the middle of the lawn would detract from the tranquillity of adjoining residences. It would injure their amenities.”
Georgie plodded beside her, wishing Lucia was not so excruciatingly didactic, but trying between sneezes to be a good husband to the Mayor.
“And mayn’t you reside in an industrial zone?” he asked.
“That I must look into. I should myself certainly permit a shoe-maker to live above his shop. Then there’s the general business zone. I trust that Diva’s tea-rooms in the High Street are in order: it would be sad for her if I had to tell her to close them . . . Ah, our comfortable garden-room again! You were asking just now about residence in an industrial zone. I think I have some papers here which will tell you that. And there’s a coloured map of zones somewhere, green for industrial, blue for residential and yellow for general business, which would fascinate you. Where is it now?”
“Don’t bother about it to-night,” said Georgie. “I can easily wait till to-morrow. What about some music? There’s that Scarlatti duet.”
“Ah, divino Scarlattino!” said Lucia absently, as she turned over her papers. “Eureka! Here it is! No, that’s about slums, but also very interesting . . . What’s a ‘messuage’?”
“Probably a misprint for message,” said he. “Or massage.”
“No, neither makes sense: I must put a query to that.”
Georgie sat down at the piano, and played a few fragments of remembered tunes. Lucia continued reading: it was rather difficult to understand, and the noise distracted her.
“Delicious tunes,” she said, “but would it be very selfish of me, dear, to ask you to stop while I’m tackling this? So important that I should have it at my fingers’ ends before the next meeting, and be able to explain it. Ah, I see . . . no, that’s green. Industrial. But in half an hour or so—”
Georgie closed the piano.
“I think I shall go to bed,” he said. “I may have caught cold.”
“Ah, now I see,” cried Lucia triumphantly. “You can reside in any zone. That is only fair: why should a chemist in the High Street be forced to live half a mile away? And very clearly put. I could not have expressed it better myself. Good-night, dear. A few drops of camphor on a lump of sugar. Sleep well.”
The Mayoress was as zealous as the Mayor. She rang Lucia up at breakfast time every morning, and wished to speak to her personally.
“Anything I can do for you, dear Worship?” she asked. “Always at your service, as I needn’t remind you.”
“Nothing whatever, thanks,” answered Lucia. “I’ve a Council meeting this afternoon—”
“No points you’d like to talk over with me? Sure?”
“Quite,” said Lucia firmly.
“There are one or two bits of things I should like to bring to your notice,” said the baffled Elizabeth, “for of course you can’t keep in touch with everything. I’ll pop in at one for a few minutes and chance finding you disengaged. And a bit of news.”
Lucia went back to her congealed bacon.
“She’s got quite a wrong notion of the duties of a Mayoress, Georgie,” she said. “I wish she would understand that if I want her help I shall ask for it. She has nothing to do with my official duties, and as she’s not on the Town Council, she can’t dip her oar very deep.”
“She’s hoping to run you,” said Georgie. “She hopes to have her finger in every pie. She will if she can.”
“I have got to be very tactful,” said Lucia thoughtfully. “You see the only object of my making her Mayoress was to dope her malignant propensities, and if I deal with her too rigorously I should merely stimulate them . . . Ah, we must begin our régime of plain living. Let us go and do our marketing at once, and then I can study the agenda for this afternoon before Elizabeth arrives.”
Elizabeth had some assorted jobs for Worship to attend to. Worship ought to know that a car had come roaring down the hill into Tilling yesterday at so terrific a pace that she hadn’t time to see the number. A van and Susan’s Royce had caused a complete stoppage of traffic in the High Street; anyone with only a few minutes to spare to catch a train must have missed it. “And far worse was a dog that howled all last night outside the house next Grebe,” said Elizabeth. “Couldn’t sleep a wink.”
“But I can’t stop it,” said Lucia.
“No? I should have thought some threatening notice might be served on the owner. Or shall I write a letter to the Argus, which we both might sign. More weight. Or I would write a personal note to you which you might read to the Council. Whichever you like, Worship. You to choose.”
Lucia did not find any of these alternatives attractive, but made a business-like note of them all.
“Most valuable suggestions,” she said. “But I don’t feel that I could move officially about the dog. It might be a cat next, or a canary.”
Elizabeth was gazing out of the window with that kind, meditative smile which so often betokened some atrocious train of thought.
“Just little efforts of mine, dear Worship, to enlarge your sphere of influence,” she said. “Soon, perhaps, I may be able to support you more directly.”
Lucia felt a qualm of sickening apprehension.
“That would be lovely,” she said. “But how, dear Elizabeth, could you do more than you are doing?”
Elizabeth focused her kind smile on dear Worship’s face. A close up.
“Guess, dear!” she said.
“Couldn’t,” said Lucia.
“Well, then, there’s a vacancy in the Borough Council, and I’m standing for it. Oh, if I got in! At hand to support you in all your Council meetings. You and me! Just think!”
Lucia made one desperate attempt to avert this appalling prospect, and began to gabble.
“That would be wonderful,” she said, “and how well I know that it’s your devotion to me that prompts you. How I value that! But somehow it seems to me that your influence, your tremendous influence, would be lessened rather than the reverse, if you became just one out of my twelve Councillors. Your unique position as Mayoress would suffer. Tilling would think of you as one of a body. You, my right hand, would lose your independence. And then, unlikely, even impossible as it sounds, supposing you were not elected? A ruinous loss of prestige—”
Foljambe entered.
“Lunch,” she said, and left the door of the garden-room wide open.
Elizabeth sprang up with a shrill cry of astonishment.
“No idea it was lunch-time,” she cried. “How naughty of me not to have kept my eye on the clock, but time passed so quickly, as it always does, dear, when I’m talking to you. But you haven’t convinced me; far from it. I must fly; Benjy will call me a naughty girl for being so late.”
Lucia remembered that the era of plain living had begun. Hashed mutton and treacle pudding. Perhaps Elizabeth might g
o away if she knew that. On the other hand, Elizabeth had certainly come here at one o’clock in order to be asked to lunch, and it would be wiser to ask her.
“Ring him up and say you’re lunching here,” she decided. “Do.”
Elizabeth recollected that she had ordered hashed beef and marmalade pudding at home.
“I consider that a command, dear Worship,” she said. “May I use your telephone?”
All these afflictions strongly reacted on Georgie. Mutton and Mapp and incessant conversation about municipal affairs were making home far less comfortable than he had a right to expect. Then Lucia sprang another conscientious surprise on him, when she returned that afternoon positively invigorated by a long Council meeting.
“I want to consult you, Georgie,” she said. “Ever since the Hampshire Argus reported that I played Bridge in Diva’s card-room, the whole question has been on my mind. I don’t think I ought to play for money.”
“You can’t call threepence a hundred money,” said Georgie.
“It is not a large sum, but emphatically it is money. It’s the principle of the thing. A very sad case — all this is very private — has just come to my notice. Young Twistevant, the grocer’s son, has been backing horses, and is in debt with his last quarter’s rent unpaid. Lately married and a baby coming. All the result of gambling.”
“I don’t see how the baby is the result of gambling,” said Georgie. “Unless he bet he wouldn’t have one.”
Lucia gave the wintry smile that was reserved for jokes she didn’t care about.
“I expressed myself badly,” she said. “I only meant that his want of money, when he will need it more than ever, is the result of gambling. The principle is the same whether it’s threepence or a starving baby. And Bridge surely, with its call both on prudence and enterprise, is a sufficiently good game to play for love: for love of Bridge. Let us set an example. When we have our next Bridge party, let it be understood that there are no stakes.”
“I don’t think you’ll get many Bridge parties if that’s understood,” said Georgie. “Everyone will go seven no trumps at once.”