by E. F. Benson
“My syllabus for a series of lectures at the Literary Institute is not making a good start,” she said. “I asked Mr. Desmond McCarthy to talk to us about the less known novelists of the time of William IV, but he has declined. Nor can Mr. Noel Coward speak on the technique of the modern stage on any of the five nights I offered him. I am surprised that they should not have welcomed the opportunity to get more widely known.”
“Tar’some of them,” said Georgie sympathetically, “such a chance for them.”
Lucia gave him a sharp glance, then mused for a while in silence over her scheme. Fresh ideas began to flood her mind so copiously that she could scarcely scribble them down fast enough to keep up with them.
“I think I will lecture on the Shakespearian drama myself,” she said. “That should be the inaugural lecture, say April the fifteenth. I don’t seem to have any engagement that night, and you will take the chair for me . . . Georgie, we might act a short scene together, without dresses or scenery to illustrate the simplicity of the Elizabethan stage. Really, on reflection I think my first series of lectures had much better be given by local speakers. The Padre would address us one night on Free Will or the Origin of Evil. Irene on the technique of fresco painting. Diva on catering for the masses. Then I ought to ask Elizabeth to lecture on something, though I’m sure I don’t know on what subject she has any ideas of the slightest value. Ah! Instead, Major Benjy on tiger-shooting. Then a musical evening: the art of Beethoven, with examples. That would make six lectures; six would be enough. I think it would be expected of me to give the last as well as the first. Admission, a shilling, or five shillings for the series. Official, I think, under the patronage of the Mayor.”
“No,” said Georgie, going back to one of the earlier topics. “I won’t act any Shakespearian scene with you to illustrate Elizabethan simplicity. And if you ask me I don’t believe people will pay a shilling to hear the Padre lecture on Free-Will. They can hear that sort of thing every Sunday morning for nothing but the offertory.”
“I will consider that,” said Lucia, not listening and beginning to draw up a schedule of the discourses. “And if you won’t do a scene with me, I might do the sleep-walking from Macbeth by myself. But you must help me with the Beethoven evening. Extracts from the Fifth Symphony for four hands on the piano. That glorious work contains, as I have always maintained, the Key to the Master’s soul. We must practise hard, and get our extracts by heart.”
Georgie felt the sensation, that was now becoming odiously familiar, of being hunted and harried. Life for him was losing that quality of leisure, which gave one time to feel busy and ready to take so thrilled an interest in the minute happenings of the day. Lucia was poisoning that eager fount by this infusion of mayoral duties and responsibilities, and tedious schemes for educational lectures and lighting of the streets. True, the old pellucid spring gushed out sometimes: who, for instance, but she could have made Tilling bicycle-crazy, or have convinced Susan that Blue Birdie had gone to a higher sphere? That was her real métier, to render the trivialities of life intense for others. But how her schemes for the good of Tilling bored him!
Lucia finished sketching out her schedule, and began gabbling again.
“Yes, Georgie, the dates seem to work out all right,” she said, “though Mrs. Simpson must check them for me. April the fifteenth: my inaugural lecture on Shakespeare: April the twenty-second: the Padre on Free-Will which I am convinced will attract all serious people, for it is a most interesting subject, and I don’t think any final explanation of it has yet been given; April the twenty-ninth, Irene on the technique of fresco painting: May the sixth: Diva on tea-shops. I expect I shall have to write it for her. May the thirteenth: Major Benjy on tigers: May the twentieth: Beethoven, me again . . . I should like to see these little centres of enlightenment established everywhere in England, and I count it a privilege to be able, in my position, to set an example. The B.B.C., I don’t deny, is doing good work, but lectures delivered viva voce are so much more vivid. Personal magnetism. I shall always entertain the lecturer and a few friends to a plain supper-party here afterwards, and we can continue the discussion in the garden-room. I shall ask some distinguished expert on the subject to come down and stay the night after each lecture: the Bishop when the Padre lectures on Free-Will: Mr. Gielgud when I speak about Shakespearian technique: Sir Henry Wood when we have our Beethoven night: and perhaps the Manager of Messrs. Lyons after Diva’s discourse. I shall send my Town Council complimentary seats in the first row for the inaugural lecture. How does that strike you for a rough sketch? You know how I value your judgment, and it is most important to get the initial steps right.”
Georgie was standing by her table, suppressing a yawn as he glanced at the schedule, and feeling in his waistcoat pocket for his gun-metal match-box with the turquoise latch. As he scooped for it, there dropped out the silver top of Major Benjy’s riding whip, which he always kept on his person. It fell noiselessly on the piece of damp sponge which Mrs. Simpson always preferred to use for moistening postage-stamps, rather than the less genteel human tongue. Simultaneously the telephone-bell rang, and Lucia jumped up.
“That incessant summons!” she said. “A perfect slavery. I think I must take my name off the exchange, and give my number to just a few friends . . . Yes, yes, I am the Mayor of Tilling. Irene, is it? . . . My dear how colossal! I don’t suppose anybody in Tilling has ever had a picture in the Royal Academy before. Is that the amended version of your fresco, Venus with no clothes on coming to Tilling? I’m sure this one is far nicer. How I wish I had seen it before you sent it in, but when the Academy closes you must show it at our picture-exhibition here. Oh, I’ve put you down to give a lecture in my Mayoral course of Culture on the technique of painting in fresco. And you’re going up to London for varnishing day? Do take care. So many pictures have been ruined by being varnished too much.”
She rang off.
“Accepted, is it?” said Georgie in great excitement. “There’ll be wigs on the green if it’s exhibited here. I believe I told you about it, but you were wrestling with the Royal Fish Express. Elizabeth, unmistakable, in a shawl and bonnet and striped skirt and button-boots, standing on an oyster-shell, and being blown into Tilling by Benjy in a top-hat among the clouds.”
“Dear me, that sounds rather dangerously topical,” said Lucia. “But it’s time to dress. The Mapp-Flints are dining, aren’t they? What a coincidence!”
They had a most harmonious dinner, with never a mention of bicycles. Benjy readily consented to read a paper on tiger-shooting on May 13.
“Ah, what a joy,” said Lucia. “I will book it. And some properties perhaps, to give vividness. The riding-whip with which you hit the tiger in the face. Oh, how stupid of me. I had forgotten about its mysterious disappearance which was never cleared up. Pass me the sugar, Georgie.”
There was a momentary pause, and Lucia grew very red in the face as she buried her orange in sugar. But that was soon over, and presently the Mayor and Mayoress went out to the garden-room with interlaced waists and arms. Lucia had told Georgie not to stop too long in the dining-room and Benjy made the most of his time and drank a prodigious quantity of a sound but inexpensive port. Elizabeth had eaten a dried fig for dessert, and a minute but adamantine fig-seed had lodged itself at the base of one of her beautiful teeth. She knew she would not have a tranquil moment till she had evicted it, and she needed only a few seconds unobserved.
“Dear Worship,” she said. “Give me a treat, and let your hands just stray over the piano. Haven’t heard you play for ever so long.”
Lucia never needed pressing and opened the lid of the instrument.
“I’m terribly rusty, I’m afraid,” she said, “for I get no time for practising nowadays. Beethoven, dear, or a morsel of precious Mozart; whichever you like.”
“Oh, prettioth Mothart, pleath,” mumbled Elizabeth, who had effaced herself behind Lucia’s business table. A moment sufficed, and her eye, as she turned round towards
the piano again and drank in precious Mozart, fell on Mrs. Simpson’s piece of damp sponge. Something small and bright, long-lost and familiar, gleamed there. Hesitation would have been mere weakness (besides, it belonged to her husband). She reached out a stealthy hand, and put it inside her bead-bag.
It was barely eleven when the party broke up, for Elizabeth was totally unable to concentrate on cards when her bag contained the lock, if not the key to the unsolved mystery, and she insisted that dear Worship looked very tired. But both she and Benjy were very tired before they had framed and been forced to reject all the hypotheses which could account for the reappearance in so fantastic a place of this fragment of the riding-whip. If the relic had come to light in one of Diva’s jam-puffs, the quality of the mystery would have been less baffling, for at least it would have been found on the premises where it was lost, but how it had got to Lucia’s table was as inexplicable as the doctrine of Freewill. They went over the ground five or six times.
“Lucia wasn’t even present when it vanished,” said Elizabeth as the clock struck midnight. “Often, as you know, I think Worship is not quite as above-board as I should wish a colleague to be, but here I do not suspect her.”
Benjy poured himself out some whisky. Finding that Elizabeth was far too absorbed in speculation to notice anything that was going on round her, he hastily drank it, and poured out some more.
“Pillson then,” he suggested.
“No; I rang him up that night from Diva’s, as he was going to his bath,” said she, “and he denied knowing anything about it. He’s fairly truthful — far more truthful than Worship anyhow — as far as I’ve observed.”
“Diva then,” said Benjy, quietly strengthening his drink.
“But I searched and I searched, and she had not been out of my sight for five minutes. And where’s the rest of it? One could understand the valuable silver cap disappearing — though I don’t say for a moment that Diva would have stolen it — but it’s just that part that has reappeared.”
“All mos’ mysterious,” said Benjy. “But wo’ll you do next, Liz? There’s the cruksh. Wo’ll you do next?”
Benjy had not observed that the Mayoress was trembling slightly, like a motor-bicycle before it starts. Otherwise he would not have been so surprised when she sprang up with a loud crow of triumph.
“I have it,” she cried. “Eureka! as Worship so often says when she’s thought of nothing at all. Don’t say a word to anybody, Benjy, about the silver cap, but have a fresh cane put into it, and use it as a property (isn’t that the word?) at your tiger-talk, just as if it had never been lost. That’ll be a bit of puzzle-work for guilty persons, whoever they may be. And it may lead to something in the way of discovery. The thief may turn pale or red or betray himself in some way . . . What a time of night!”
Puzzle-work began next morning.
“I can’t make out what’s happened to it,” said Georgie, in a state of fuss, as he came down very late to breakfast, “and Foljambe can’t either.”
Lucia gave an annoyed glance at the clock. It was five minutes to ten; Georgie was getting lazier and lazier in the morning. She gave the special peal of silvery laughter in which mirth played a minor part.
“Good afternoon, caro,” she said sarcastically. “Quite rested? Capital!”
Georgie did not like her tone.
“No, I’m rather tired still,” he said. “I shall have a nap after breakfast.”
Lucia abandoned her banter, as he did not seem to appreciate it.
“Well, I’ve finished,” she said. “Poor Worship has got to go and dictate to Mrs. Simpson. And what was it you and Foljambe couldn’t find?”
“The silver top to Benjy’s riding-whip. I was sure it was in my yesterday’s waistcoat pocket, but it isn’t, and Foljambe and I have been through all my suits. Nowhere.”
“Georgie, how very queer,” she said. “When did you see it last?”
“Some time yesterday,” he said, opening a letter. A bill.
“It’ll turn up. Things do,” said Lucia.
He was still rather vexed with her.
“They seem to be better at vanishing,” he said. “There was Blue Birdie—”
He opened the second of his letters, and the thought of riding-whip and Blue Birdie alike were totally expunged from his brain.
“My dear,” he cried. “You’d never guess. Olga Bracely. She’s back from her world-tour.”
Lucia pretended to recall distant memories. She actually had the most vivid recollection of Olga Bracely, and, not less, of Georgie’s unbounded admiration of her in his bachelor days. She wished the world-tour had been longer.
“Olga Bracely?” she said vaguely. “Ah, yes. Prima donna. Charming voice; some notes lovely. So she’s got back. How nice!”
“ — and she’s going to sing at Covent Garden next month,” continued Georgie, deep in her letter. “They’re producing Cortese’s opera, Lucrezia, on May the twentieth. Oh, she’ll give us seats in her box. It’s a gala performance. Isn’t that too lovely? And she wants us to come and stay with her at Riseholme.”
“Indeed, most kind of her,” said Lucia. “The dear thing! But she doesn’t realize how difficult it is for me to get away from Tilling while I am Mayor.”
“I don’t suppose she has the slightest idea that you are Mayor,” said Georgie, beginning to read the letter over again.
“Ah, I forgot,” said Lucia. “She has been on a world tour, you told me. And as for going up to hear Lucrezia — though it’s very kind of her — I think we must get out of it. Cortese brought it down to Riseholme, I remember, as soon as he had finished it, and dear Olga begged me to come and hear her sing the great scene — I think she called it — and, oh, that cacophonous evening! Ah! Eureka! Did you not say the date was May the twentieth? How providential! That’s the very evening we have fixed for my lecture on Beethoven. Olga will understand how impossible it is to cancel that.”
“But that’s quite easily altered,” said Georgie. “You made out just the roughest schedule, and Benjy’s tiger-slaying is the only date fixed. And think of hearing the gala performance in London! Lucrezia’s had the hugest success in America and Australia. And in Berlin and Paris.”
Lucia’s decisive mind wavered. She saw herself sitting in a prominent box at Covent Garden, with all her seed-pearls and her Mayoral badge. Reporters would be eager to know who she was, and she would be careful to tell the box-attendant, so that they could find out without difficulty. And at Tilling, what réclame to have gone up to London on the prima donna’s invitation to hear this performance of the world-famous Lucrezia. She might give an interview to the Hampshire Argus about it when she got back.
“Of course we must go,” continued Georgie. “But she wants to know at once.”
Still Lucia hesitated. It would be almost as magnificent to tell Tilling that she had refused Olga’s invitation, except for the mortifying fact that Tilling would probably not believe her. And if she refused, what would Georgie do? Would he leave her to lecture on Beethoven all by herself, or would he loyally stand by her, and do his part in the four-handed pianoforte arrangement of the Fifth Symphony? He furnished the answer to that unspoken question.
“I’m sorry if you find it impossible to go,” he said quite firmly, “but I shall go anyhow. You can play bits of the Moonlight by yourself. You’ve often said it was another key to Beethoven’s soul.”
It suddenly struck Lucia that Georgie seemed not to care two hoots whether she went or not. Her sensitive ear could not detect the smallest regret in his voice, and the prospect of his going alone was strangely distasteful. She did not fear any temperamental disturbance; Georgie’s passions were not volcanic, but there was glitter and glamour in opera houses and prima donnas which might upset him if he was unchaperoned.
“I’ll try to manage it somehow, dear, for your sake,” she said, “for I know how disappointed you would be if I didn’t join you in Olga’s welcome to London. Dear me; I’ve been keeping Mrs. Si
mpson waiting a terrible time. Shall I take Olga’s letter and dictate a grateful acceptance from both of us?”
“Don’t bother,” said Georgie. “I’ll do it. You’re much too busy. And as for that bit of Benjy’s riding-whip, I daresay it will turn up.”
The prospectus of the Mayoral series of cultural lectures at the Literary Institute was re-cast, for the other lecturers, wildly excited at the prospect, found every night equally convenient. Mrs. Simpson was supplied with packets of tickets, and books of receipts and counterfoils for those who sent a shilling for a single lecture or five shillings for the whole course. She arrived now at half-past nine o’clock so as to be ready for the Mayor’s dictation of official correspondence at ten, and had always got through this additional work by that time. Complimentary tickets in the front row were sent to Town Councillors for Lucia’s inaugural lecture, with the request that they should be returned if the recipient found himself unable to attend. Apart from these, the sale was very sluggish. Mr. John Gielgud could not attend the lecture on Shakespearian technique, and previous engagements prevented the Bishop and Sir Henry Wood from listening to the Padre on Free Will and Lucia on Beethoven. But luckily the Hampshire Argus had already announced that they had received invitations.
“Charming letters from them all, Georgie,” said Lucia, tearing them up, “and their evident disappointment at not being able to come really touches me. And I don’t regret, far from it, that apparently we shall not have very large audiences. A small audience is more intime; the personal touch is more quickly established. And now for my sleep-walking scene in the first lecture. I should like to discuss that with you. I shall give that with Elizabethan realism.”
“Not pyjamas?” asked Georgie, in an awestruck voice.
“Certainly not: it would be a gross anachronism. But I shall have all the lights in the room extinguished. Night.”
“Then they won’t see you,” said Georgie. “You would lose the personal touch.”