Lucia Victrix

  ‘It’s worth while seeing if she’ll stay with you on these terms,’ she said.

  ‘Rather. I shall suggest it at once,’ said Georgie. ‘I think I shall congratulate her very warmly, and say how pleased I am, and then ask her. Or would it be better to be very cold and preoccupied and not talk to her at all? She’d hate that, and then when I ask her after some days whether she’ll stop on with me, she might promise anything to see me less unhappy again.’

  Lucia did not quite approve of this Machiavellian policy.

  ‘On the other hand, it might make her marry Cadman instantly, in order to have done with you,’ she suggested. ‘You’d better be careful.’

  ‘I’ll think it over,’ said Georgie. ‘Perhaps it would be safer to be very nice to her about it and appeal to her better nature, if she’s got one. But I know I shall never manage to call her Cadman. She must keep her maiden name, like an actress.’

  Lucia duly put in force her disciplinary measures for the reduction of Elizabeth. Major Benjy, Diva and Georgie dined with her that night, and there was a plate of nougat chocolates for Diva, whose inordinate passion for them was known all over Tilling, and a fiery curry for the Major to remind him of India, and a dish of purple figs bought at the greengrocer’s but plucked from the tree outside the garden-room. She could not resist giving Elizabeth ever so gentle a little slap over this, and said that it was rather a roundabout process to go down to the High Street to buy the figs which Coplen plucked from the tree in the garden, and took down with other garden-produce to the shop: she must ask dear Elizabeth to allow her to buy them, so to speak, at the pit-mouth. But she was genuinely astonished at the effect this little joke had on Diva. Hastily she swallowed a nougat chocolate entire and turned bright red.

  ‘But doesn’t Elizabeth give you garden-produce?’ she asked in an incredulous voice.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Lucia, ‘Just flowers for the house. Nothing else.’

  ‘Well, I never!’ said Diva. ‘I fully understood, at least I thought I did –’

  Lucia got up. She must be magnanimous and encourage no public exposure, whatever it might be, of Elizabeth’s conduct, but for the pickling of the rod of discipline she would like to hear about it quietly.

  ‘Let’s go into the garden-room and have a chat,’ she said. ‘Look after Major Benjy, Georgie, and don’t sit too long in bachelordom, for I must have a little game of bridge with him. I’m terribly frightened of him, but he and Mrs Plaistow must be kind to beginners like you and me.’

  The indignant Diva poured out her tale of Elizabeth’s iniquities in a turgid flood.

  ‘So like Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘I asked her if she gave you garden-produce, and she said she wasn’t going to dig up her potatoes and carry them away. Well, of course I thought that meant she did give it you. So like her. Bismarck, wasn’t it, who told the truth in order to deceive? And so of course I gave her my garden-produce and she’s selling one and eating the other. I wish I’d known I ought to have distrusted her.’

  Lucia smiled that indulgent Sunday-evening smile which meant she was thinking hard on week-day subjects.

  ‘I like Elizabeth so much,’ she said, ‘and what do a few figs matter?’

  ‘No, but she always scores,’ said Diva, ‘and sometimes it’s hard to bear. She got my house with garden-produce thrown in for eight guineas a week and she lets her own without garden-produce for twelve.’

  ‘No dear, I pay fifteen,’ said Lucia.

  Diva stared at her open-mouthed.

  ‘But it was down in Woolgar’s books at twelve,’ she said. ‘I saw it myself. She is a one: isn’t she?’

  Lucia maintained her attitude of high nobility, but this information added a little more pickling.

  ‘Dear Elizabeth!’ she said. ‘So glad that she was sharp enough to get a few more guineas, I expect she’s very clever, isn’t she? And here come the gentlemen. Now for a jolly little game of bridge.’

  Georgie was astonished at Lucia. She was accustomed to lay down the law with considerable firmness, and instruct partners and opponents alike, but to-night a most unusual humility possessed her. She was full of diffidence about her own skill and of praise for her partner’s: she sought advice, even once asking Georgie what she ought to have played, though that was clearly a mistake, for next moment she rated him. But for the other two she had nothing but admiring envy at their declarations and their management of the hand, and when Diva revoked she took all the blame on herself for not having asked her whether her hand was bare of the suit. Rubber after rubber they played in an amity hitherto unknown in the higher gambling circles of Tilling; and when, long after the incredible hour of twelve had struck, it was found on the adjustment of accounts that Lucia was the universal loser, she said she had never bought experience so cheaply and pleasantly.

  Major Benjy wiped the foam of his third (surreptitious and hastily consumed) whisky and soda from his walrus-moustache.

  ‘Most agreeable evening of bridge I’ve ever spent in Tilling,’ he said. ‘Bless me, when I think of the scoldings I’ve had in this room for some little slip, and the friction there’s been … Mrs Plaistow knows what I mean.’

  ‘I should think I did,’ said Diva, beginning to simmer again at the thought of garden-produce. ‘Poor Elizabeth! Lessons in self-control are what she wants and after that a few lessons on the elements of the game wouldn’t be amiss. Then it would be time to think about telling other people how to play.’

  This very pleasant party broke up, and Georgie hurrying home to Mallards Cottage, thought he could discern in these comments the key to Lucia’s unwonted humility at the card-table. For herself she had only kind words on the subject of Elizabeth as befitted a large-hearted woman, but Diva and Major Benjy could hardly help contrasting brilliantly to her advantage, the charming evening they had spent with the vituperative scenes which usually took place when they played bridge in the garden-room. ‘I think Lucia has begun,’ thought Georgie to himself as he went noiselessly upstairs so as not to disturb the slumbers of Foljambe.

  It was known, of course, all over Tilling the next morning that there had been a series of most harmonious rubbers of bridge last night at Mallards till goodness knew what hour, for Diva spent half the morning in telling everybody about it, and the other half in advising them not to get their fruit and vegetables at the shop which dealt in the garden-produce of the Bismarckian Elizabeth. Equally well known was it that the Wyses were dining at Mallards to-night, for Mrs Wyse took care of that, and at eight o’clock that evening the Royce started from Porpoise Street, and arrived at Mallards at precisely one minute past. Georgie came on foot from the Cottage thirty yards away in the other direction, in the highest spirits, for Foljambe after consultation with her Cadman had settled to continue on day-duty after the return to Riseholme. So Georgie did not intend at present to execute that vindictive codicil to his will. He told the Wyses whom he met on the doorstep of Mallards about the happy termination of this domestic crisis, while Mrs Wyse took off her sables and disclosed the fact that she was wearing the order of the MBE on her ample bosom; and he observed that Mr Wyse had a soft crinkly shirt with a low collar, and velveteen dress clothes: this pretty costume caused him to look rather like a conjurer. There followed very polite conversations at dinner, full of bows from Mr Wyse; first he talked to his hostess, and when Lucia tried to produce general talk and spoke to Georgie, he instantly turned his head to the right, and talked most politely to his wife about the weather and the news in the evening paper till Lucia was ready for him again.

  ‘I hear from our friend Miss Mapp,’ he said to her, ‘that you speak the most beautiful and fluent Italian.’

  Lucia was quite ready to oblige.

  ‘Ah, che bella lingua!’ said she. ‘Ma ho dimenticato tutto, non parla nessuno in Riseholme.’

  ‘But I hope you will have the opportunity of speaking it before long in Tilling,’ said Mr Wyse. ‘My sister Amelia, Contessa Faraglione, may possibly be with us before long and I
shall look forward to hearing you and she talk together. A lovely language to listen to, though Amelia laughs at my poor efforts when I attempt it.’

  Lucia smelled danger here. There had been a terrible occasion once at Riseholme when her bilingual reputation had been shattered by her being exposed to the full tempest of Italian volleyed at her by a native, and she had been unable to understand anything that he said. But Amelia’s arrival was doubtful and at present remote, and it would be humiliating to confess that her knowledge was confined to a chosen though singularly limited vocabulary.

  ‘Georgie, we must rub up our Italian again,’ she said. ‘Mr Wyse’s sister may be coming here before long. What an opportunity for us to practise!’

  ‘I do not imagine that you have much need of practice,’ said Mr Wyse, bowing to Lucia. ‘And I hear your Elizabethan fête’ (he bowed to Queen Elizabeth) ‘was an immense success. We so much want somebody at Tilling who can organize and carry through schemes like that. My wife does all she can, but she sadly needs someone to help, or indeed direct her. The hospital for instance, terribly in need of funds. She and I were talking as to whether we could not get up a garden fête with some tableaux or something of the sort to raise money. She has designs on you, I know, when she can get you alone, for indeed there is no one in Tilling with ability and initiative.’

  Suddenly it struck Lucia that though this was very gratifying to herself, it had another purpose, namely to depreciate somebody else, and surely that could only be one person. But that name must not escape her lips.

  ‘My services, such as they are, are completely at Mrs Wyse’s disposal,’ she said, ‘as long as I am in Tilling. This garden for instance. Would that be a suitable place for something of the sort?’

  Mr Wyse bowed to the garden.

  ‘The ideal spot,’ said he. ‘All Tilling would flock here at your bidding. Never yet in my memory has the use of it been granted for such a purpose; we have often lamented it.’

  There could no longer be much doubt as to the sub-current in such remarks, but the beautiful smooth surface must not be broken.

  ‘I quite feel with you,’ said Lucia. ‘If one is fortunate enough, even for a short time, to possess a pretty little garden like this, it should be used for the benefit of charitable entertainment. The hospital: what more deserving object could we have? Some tableaux, you suggested. I’m sure Mr Pillson and I would be only too glad to repeat a scene or two from our fête at Riseholme.’

  Mr Wyse bowed so low that his large loose tie nearly dipped itself in an ice pudding.

  ‘I was trying to summon my courage to suggest exactly that,’ he said. ‘Susan, Mrs Lucas encourages us to hope that she will give you a favourable audience about the project we talked over.’

  The favourable audience began as soon as the ladies rose, and was continued when Georgie and Mr Wyse followed them. Already it had been agreed that the Padre might contribute an item to the entertainment, and that was very convenient, for he was to dine with Lucia the next night.

  ‘His Scotch stories,’ said Susan. ‘I can never hear them too often, for though I’ve not got a drop of Scotch blood myself, I can appreciate them. Not a feature of course, Mrs Lucas, but just to fill up pauses. And then there’s Mrs Plaistow. How I laugh when she does the sea-sick passenger with an orange, though I doubt if you can get oranges now. And Miss Coles. A wonderful mimic. And then there’s Major Benjy. Perhaps he would read us portions of his diary.’

  A pause followed. Lucia had one of those infallible presentiments that a certain name hitherto omitted would follow. It did.

  ‘And if Miss Mapp would supply the refreshment department with fruit from her garden here, that would be a great help,’ said Mrs Wyse.

  Lucia caught in rapid succession the respective eyes of all her guests, each of whom in turn looked away. ‘So Tilling knows all about the garden-produce already,’ she thought to herself.

  Bridge followed, and here she could not be as humble as she had been last night, for both the Wyses abased themselves before she had time to begin.

  ‘We know already, said Algernon, ‘of the class of player that you are, Mrs Lucas,’ he said. ‘Any hints you will give Susan and me will be so much appreciated. We shall give you no game at all I am afraid, but we shall have a lesson. There is no one in Tilling who has any pretensions of being a player. Major Benjy and Mrs Plaistow and we sometimes have a well-fought rubber on our own level, and the Padre does not always play a bad game. But otherwise the less said about our bridge the better. Susan, my dear, we must do our best.’

  Here indeed was a reward for Lucia’s humility last night. The winners had evidently proclaimed her consummate skill, and was that, too, a reflection on somebody else, only once hitherto named, and that in connection with garden-produce? To-night Lucia’s hands dripped with aces and kings: she denuded her adversaries of all their trumps, and then led one more for safety’s sake, after which she poured forth a galaxy of winners. Whoever was her partner was in luck, and to-night it was Georgie who had to beg for change for a ten-shilling note and leave the others to adjust their portions. He recked nothing of this financial disaster, for Foljambe was not lost to him. When the party broke up Mrs Wyse begged him to allow her to give him a lift in the Royce, but as this would entail a turning of that majestic car, which would take at least five minutes followed by a long drive for them round the church square and down into the High Street and up again to Porpoise Street, he adventured forth on foot for his walk of thirty yards and arrived without undue fatigue.

  Georgie and Lucia started their sketching next morning. Like charity, they began at home, and their first subjects were each other’s houses. They put their camp-stools side by side, but facing in opposite directions, in the middle of the street half-way between Mallards and Mallards Cottage; and thus, by their having different objects to portray; they avoided any sort of rivalry, and secured each other’s companionship.

  ‘So good for our drawing,’ said Georgie. ‘We were getting to do nothing but trees and clouds which needn’t be straight.’

  ‘I’ve got the crooked chimney,’ said Lucia proudly. ‘That one beyond your house. I think I shall put it straight. People might think I had done it crooked by accident. What do you advise?’

  ‘I think I wouldn’t,’ said he. ‘There’s character in its crookedness. Or you might make it rather more crooked than it is: then there won’t be any doubt … Here comes the Wyses’ car. We shall have to move on to the pavement. Tarsome.’

  A loud hoot warned them that that was the safer course, and the car lurched towards them. As it passed, Mr Wyse saw whom he had disturbed, stopped the Royce (which had so much better a right to the road than the artists) and sprang out, hat in hand.

  ‘A thousand apologies,’ he cried. ‘I had no idea who it was, and for what artistic purpose, occupying the roadway. I am indeed distressed, I would instantly have retreated and gone round the other way had I perceived in time. May I glance? Exquisite! The crooked chimney! Mallards Cottage! The west front of the church!’ He bowed to them all.

  There followed that evening the third dinner-party when the Padre and wee wifie made the quartet. The Royce had called for him that day to take him to lunch in Porpoise Street (Lucia had seen it go by), and it was he who now introduced the subject of the proposed entertainment on behalf of the hospital, for he knew all about it and was ready to help in any way that Mistress Lucas might command. There were some Scottish stories which he would be happy to narrate, in order to fill up intervals between the tableaux, and he had ascertained that Miss Coles (dressed as usual as a boy) would give her most amusing parody of ‘The boy stood on the burning deck’, and that Mistress Diva said she thought that an orange or two might be procured. If not, a ripe tomato would serve the purpose. He would personally pledge himself for the services of the church choir to sing catches and glees and madrigals, whenever required. He suggested also that such members of the workhouse as were not bedridden might be entertained to tea, in
which case the choir would sing grace before and after buns.

  ‘As to the expense of that, if you approve,’ he said, ‘put another baubee on the price of admission, and there’ll be none in Tilling to grudge the extra expense wi’ such entertainment as you and the other leddies will offer them.’

  ‘Dear me, how quickly it is all taking shape,’ said Lucia, finding that almost without effort on her part she had been drawn into the place of prime mover in all this, and that still a sort of conspiracy of silence prevailed with regard to Miss Mapp’s name, which hitherto had only been mentioned as a suitable provider of fruit for the refreshment department. You must form a little committee, Padre, for putting all the arrangements in hand at once. There’s Mr Wyse who really thought of the idea, and you –’

  ‘And with yourself,’ broke in the Padre, ‘that will make three. That’s sufficient for any committee that is going to do its work without any argle-bargle.’

  There flashed across Lucia’s mind a fleeting vision of what Elizabeth’s face would be like when she picked up, as she would no doubt do next morning, the news of all that was becoming so solid.

  ‘I think I had better not be on the committee,’ she said, quite convinced that they would insist on it. ‘It should consist of real Tillingites who take the lead among you in such things. I am only a visitor here. They will all say I want to push myself in.’

  ‘Ah, but we can’t get on wi’out ye, Mistress Lucas,’ said the Padre. ‘You must consent to join us. An’ three, as I say, makes the perfect committee.’

  Mrs Bartlett had been listening to all this with a look of ecstatic attention on her sharp but timid little face. Here she gave vent to a series of shrill minute squeaks which expressed a mouse-like merriment, quite unexplained by anything that had been actually said, but easily accounted for by what had not been said. She hastily drank a sip of water and assured Lucia that a crumb of something (she was eating a peach) had stuck in her throat and made her cough. Lucia rose when the peach was finished.