Lucia Victrix

‘Well, quite a lot, for she told me so herself,’ said Diva. ‘I declare it made my mouth water. I’ve almost made up my mind to buy some myself with a little money I’ve got lying idle. Just a few.’

  ‘I wouldn’t if I were you, dear,’ said Elizabeth earnestly. ‘Gambling is such an insidious temptation. Benjy and I learned that at Monte Carlo.’

  ‘Well, you made something, didn’t you?’ asked Diva.

  ‘Yes, but I should always discourage anyone who might not be strong-minded enough to stop.’

  ‘I’d back the strength of my mind against yours any day,’ said Diva.

  A personal and psychological discussion might have ensued, but Lucia at that moment came out of the post-office. She held in her hand a copy of the Financial Post.

  ‘And have you bought some more Siriami?’ asked Diva with a sort of vicarious greed.

  Lucia’s eyes wore a concentrated though far-away expression as if she was absorbed in some train of transcendent reasoning. She gave a little start as Diva spoke, and recalled herself to the High Street.

  ‘Yes: I’ve bought another little parcel of shares,’ she said. ‘I heard from my broker this morning, and he agrees with me that they’ll go higher. I find his judgment is usually pretty sound.’

  ‘Diva’s told me what a stroke of luck you’ve had,’ said Elizabeth.

  Lucia smiled complacently.

  ‘No, dear Elizabeth, not luck,’ she said. ‘A little studying of the world-situation, a little inductive reasoning. The price of gold, you know: I should be much surprised if the price of gold didn’t go higher yet. Of course I may be wrong.’

  ‘I think you must be,’ said Diva. ‘There are always twenty shillings to the pound, aren’t there?’

  Lucia was not quite clear what was the answer to that. Her broker’s letter, quite approving of a further purchase on the strength of the favourable news from the mine, had contained something about the price of gold, which evidently she had not grasped.

  ‘Too intricate to explain, dear Diva,’ she said indulgently. ‘But I should be very sorry to advise you to follow my example. There is a risk. But I must be off and get back to Georgie.’

  The moment she had spoken she saw her mistake. The only way of putting it right was to take the street that led up to Mallards Cottage and then get back to Grebe by a circuitous course, else surely Elizabeth would get on Georgie’s track. Even as it was Elizabeth watched her till she had disappeared up the correct turning.

  ‘So characteristic of the dear thing,’ she said, ‘making a lot of money in Siriami, and then advising you not to touch it! I shouldn’t the least wonder if she wants to get all the shares herself and be created Dame Lucia Siriami. And then her airs, as if she was a great financier! Her views of the world-situation! Her broker who agrees with her about the rising price of gold! Why she hadn’t the slightest idea what it meant, anyone could see that. Diva, c’est trop! I shall get on with my humble marketing instead of buying parcels of gold.’

  But behind this irritation with Lucia, Elizabeth was burning with the desire to yield to the insidious temptation of which she had warned Diva, and buy some Siriami shares herself. Diva might suspect her design if she went straight into the post-office, and so she crossed the street to the butcher’s to get her rabbit. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Susan Wyse’s car slowing up to stop at the same shop, and so she stood firm and square in the doorway, determined that that sycophantic vendor of flesh-food should not sneak out to take Susan’s order before she was served herself, and that should take a long time. She would spin the rabbit out.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Worthington,’ she said in her most chatty manner. ‘I just looked in to see if you’ve got anything nice for me to give the Major for his dinner tonight. He’ll be hungry after his golfing.’

  ‘Some plump young pheasants, ma’am,’ said Mr Worthington. He was short, but by standing on tiptoe he could see that Susan’s car had stopped opposite his shop, and that her large round face appeared at the window.

  ‘Well, that does sound good,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But let me think. Didn’t I give him a pheasant a couple of days ago?’

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am, one moment,’ said this harassed tradesman. ‘There’s Mrs Wyse –’

  Elizabeth spread herself a little in the doorway with her basket to reinforce the barricade. Another car had drawn up on the opposite side of the street, and there was a nice congestion forming. Susan’s chauffeur was hooting to bring Mr Worthington out and the car behind him was hooting because it wanted to get by.

  ‘You haven’t got a wild duck, I suppose,’ said Elizabeth, gloating on the situation. ‘The Major likes a duck now and then.’

  ‘No ma’am. Mallards, if you’ll excuse me, is over.’

  More hoots and then an official voice.

  ‘Move on, please,’ said the policeman on point duty to Susan’s chauffeur. ‘There’s a block behind you and nothing in front.’

  Elizabeth heard the purr of the Royce as it moved on, releasing the traffic behind. Half-turning she could see that it drew up twenty yards further on and the chauffeur came back and waited outside the doorway which she was blocking so efficiently.

  ‘Not much choice then,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You’d better send me up a rabbit, Mr Worthington. Just a sweet little bunny, a young one mind –’

  ‘Brace of pheasants to Mrs Wyse,’ shouted the chauffeur through the window, despairing of getting in.

  ‘Right-o,’ called Mr Worthington. ‘One rabbit then, ma’am; thank you.’

  ‘Got such a thing as a woodcock?’ called the chauffeur.

  ‘Not fit to eat to-day,’ shouted Mr Worthington. ‘Couple of snipe just come in.’

  ‘I’ll go and ask.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Worthington, why didn’t you tell me you’d got a couple of snipe?’ said Elizabeth. ‘Just what the Major likes. Well, I suppose they’re promised now. I’ll take my bunny with me.’

  All this was cheerful work: she had trampled on Susan’s self-assumed right to hold up traffic till she lured butchers out into the street to attend to her, and with her bunny in her basket she crossed to the post-office again. There was a row of little boxes like mangers for those who wanted to write telegrams, and she took one of these, putting her basket on the floor behind her. As she composed this momentous telegram for the purchase of three hundred Siriami shares and the denuding of the rainy-day fund, she heard a mixed indefinable hubbub at her back and looking round saw that Diva had come in with Paddy, and that Paddy had snatched bunny from the basket, and was playing with him very prettily. He tossed him in the air, and lay down with a paw on each side of him, growling in a menacing manner as he pretended to worry him. Diva who had gone to the counter opposite with a telegram in her hand was commanding Paddy to drop it, but Paddy leaped up, squeezed himself through the swing-door and mounted guard over his prey on the pavement. Elizabeth and Diva rushed out after him and by dint of screaming ‘Trust, Paddy!’ Diva induced her dog to drop bunny.

  ‘So sorry, dear Elizabeth,’ she said, smoothing the rumpled fur. ‘Not damaged at all, I think.’

  ‘If you imagine I’m going to eat a rabbit mangled by your disgusting dog –’ began Elizabeth.

  ‘You shouldn’t have left it lying on the floor,’ retorted Diva. ‘Public place. Not my fault.’

  Mr Worthington came nimbly across the street, unaware that he was entering a storm-centre.

  ‘Mrs Wyse doesn’t need that couple of snipe, ma’am,’ he said to Elizabeth. ‘Shall I send them up to Mallards?’

  ‘I’m surprised at your offering me Mrs Wyse’s leavings,’ said Elizabeth. ‘And charge the rabbit I bought just now to Mrs Plaistow.’

  ‘But I don’t want a rabbit,’ said Diva. ‘As soon eat rats.’

  ‘All I can say is that it’s not mine,’ said Elizabeth.

  Diva thought of something rather neat.

  ‘Oh, well, it’ll do for the kitchen,’ she said, putting it in her basket.

  ‘Diva dea
r, don’t let your servants eat it,’ said Elizabeth. ‘As likely as not it would give them hydrophobia.’

  ‘Pooh!’ said Diva. ‘Bet another dog carried it when it was shot. Oh, I forgot my telegram.’

  ‘I’ll pick out a nice young plump one for you, ma’am, shall I?’ said Mr Worthington to Elizabeth.

  ‘Yes, and mind you only charge one to me.’

  The two ladies went back into the post-office with Paddy and the rabbit to finish the business which had been interrupted by that agitating scene on the pavement. Elizabeth’s handwriting was still a little ragged with emotion when she handed her telegram in, and it was not (except the address which had been written before) very legible. In fact the young lady could not be certain about it.

  ‘Buy “thin bunkered Simiawi” is it?’ she asked.

  ‘No, three hundred Siriami,’ said Elizabeth, and Diva heard. Simultaneously Diva’s young lady asked: ‘Is it Siriami?’ and Elizabeth heard. So both knew.

  They walked back together very amicably as far as Diva’s house, quite resolved not to let a rabbit wreck or even threaten so long-standing a friendship. Indeed there was no cause for friction any more, for Diva had no objection to an occasional rabbit for the kitchen, and Elizabeth saw that her bunny was far the plumper of the two. As regards Siriami, Diva had a distinct handle against her friend, in case of future emergencies, for she knew that Elizabeth had solemnly warned her not to buy them and had done so herself: she knew, too, how many Elizabeth had bought, in case she swanked about her colossal holding, whereas nobody but the young lady to whom she handed her telegram, knew how many she had bought. So they both quite looked forward to meeting that afternoon for bridge at Susan Wyse’s.

  Marketing had begun early this morning, and though highly sensational, had been brief. Consequently, when Elizabeth turned up the street towards Mallards, she met her Benjy just starting to catch the eleven o’clock tram for the golf-links. He held a folded piece of paper in his hand, which, when he saw her, he thrust into his pocket.

  ‘Well, boy o’ mine, off to your game?’ she asked. ‘Look, such a plump little bunny for dinner. And news. Lucia has become a great financier. She bought Siriami yesterday and again to-day.’

  Should she tell him she had bought Siriami too? On the whole, not. It was her own private rainy-day fund she had raided, and if, by some inscrutable savagery of Providence, the venture did not prosper, it was better that he should not know. If, on the other hand, she made money, it was wise for a married woman to have a little unbeknownst store tucked away.

  ‘Dear me, that’s a bit of luck for her, Liz,’ he said.

  Elizabeth gave a gay little laugh.

  ‘No, dear, you’re quite wrong,’ she said. ‘It’s inductive reasoning, it’s study of the world-situation. How pleasant for her to have all the gifts. Bye-bye.’

  She went into the garden-room, still feeling very sardonic about Lucia’s gifts, and wondering in an undercurrent why Benjy had looked self-conscious. She could always tell when he was self-conscious, for instead of having a shifty eye, he had quite the opposite kind of eye; he looked at her, as he had done just now, with a sort of truculent innocence, as if challenging her to suspect anything. Then that piece of paper which he had thrust into his pocket, linked itself up. It was rather like a telegraph form, and instantly she wondered if he had been buying Siriami, too, out of his exiguous income. Very wrong of him, if he had, and most secretive of him not to have told her so. Sometimes she felt that he did not give her his full confidence, and that saddened her. Of course it was not actually proved yet that he had bought Siriami, but cudgel her brains as she might, she could think of nothing else that he could have been telegraphing about. Then she calculated afresh what she stood to win if Siriami went up another three shillings, and sitting down on the hot-water pipes in the window which commanded so wide a prospect, she let her thoughts stray back to Georgie. Even as she looked out she saw Foljambe emerge from his door, and without a shadow of doubt she locked it after her.

  The speed with which Elizabeth jumped up was in no way due to the heat of the pipes. A flood of conjectures simply swept her off them. Lucia had gone up to see Georgie less than half an hour ago, so had Foljambe locked her and Georgie up together? Or had Foljambe (in case Lucia had already left) locked Georgie up alone with his cook? She hurried out for the second time that morning to have a look at the front of the house. All blinds were down.

  3

  Confidence was restored between the young couple at Mallards next morning in a manner that the most ingenious could hardly have anticipated. Elizabeth heard Benjy go thumping downstairs a full five minutes before breakfast-time, and peeping out from her bedroom door in high approval she called him a good laddie and told him to begin without her. Then suddenly she remembered something and made the utmost haste to follow. But she was afraid she would be too late.

  Benjy went straight to the dining-room, and there on the table with The Times and Daily Mirror, were two copies of the Financial Post. He had ordered one himself for the sake of fuller information about Siriami, but what about the other? It seemed unlikely that the newsagent had sent up two copies when only one was ordered. Then hearing Elizabeth’s foot on the stairs, he hastily sat down on one copy, which was all he was responsible for, and she entered.

  ‘Ah, my Financial Post,’ she said. ‘I thought it would be amusing, dear, just to see what was happening to Lucia’s gold mine. I take such an interest in it for her sake.’

  She turned over the unfamiliar pages, and clapped her hands in sympathetic delight.

  ‘Oh, Benjy-boy, isn’t that nice for her?’ she cried. ‘Siriami has gone up another three shillings. Quite a fortune!’

  Benjy was just as pleased as Elizabeth, though he marvelled at the joy that Lucia’s enrichment had given her.

  ‘No! That’s tremendous,’ he said. ‘Very pleasant indeed.’

  ‘Lovely!’ exclaimed Elizabeth. ‘The dear thing! And an article about West African mines. Most encouraging prospects, and something about the price of gold: the man expects to see it higher yet.’

  Elizabeth grew absorbed over this, and let her poached egg get cold.

  ‘I see what it means!’ she said. ‘The actual price of gold itself is going up, just as if it was coals or tobacco, so of course the gold they get out of the mine is worth more. Poor muddle-headed Diva, thinking that the number of shillings in a pound had something to do with it! And Diva will be pleased too. I know she bought some shares yesterday, after the rabbit, for she sent a telegram, and the clerk asked if a word was Siriami.’

  ‘Did she indeed?’ asked Benjy. ‘How many?’

  ‘I couldn’t see. Ring the bell, dear, and don’t shout Quai-hai. Withers has forgotten the pepper.’

  Exultant Benjy forgot about his copy of the Financial Post, on which he was sitting, and disclosed it.

  ‘What? Another Financial Post?’ cried Elizabeth. ‘Did you order one, too? Oh, Benjy, make a clean breast of it. Have you been buying Siriami as well as Lucia and Diva?’

  ‘Well, Liz, I had a hundred pounds lying idle. And not such a bad way of using them after all. A hundred and fifty shares. Three times that in shillings. Pretty good.’

  ‘Secretive one!’ said Elizabeth. ‘Naughty!’

  Benjy had a brain-wave.

  ‘And aren’t you going to tell me how many you bought?’ he asked.

  Evidently it was no use denying the imputation. Elizabeth instinctively felt that he would not believe her, for her joy for Lucia’s sake must already have betrayed her.

  ‘Three hundred,’ she said. ‘Oh, what fun! And what are we to do next? They think gold will go higher. Benjy, I think I shall buy some more. What’s the use of, say, a hundred pounds in War Loan earning three pound ten a year? I shouldn’t miss three pound ten a year … But I must get to my jobs. Not sure that I won’t treat you to a woodcock to-night, if Susan allows me to have one.’

  In the growing excitement over Siriami, Elizabeth
got quite indifferent as to whether the blinds were up or down in the windows of Georgie’s house. During the next week the shares continued to rise, and morning after morning Benjy appeared with laudable punctuality at breakfast, hungry for the Financial Post. An unprecedented extravagance infected both him and Elizabeth: sometimes he took a motor out to the links, for what did a few shillings matter when Siriami was raining so many on him, and Elizabeth vied with Susan in luxurious viands for the table. Bridge at threepence a hundred, which had till lately aroused the wildest passions, failed to thrill, and next time the four gamblers, the Mapp-Flints and Diva and Lucia, met for a game, they all agreed to play double the ordinary stake, and even at that enhanced figure a recklessness in declaration, hitherto unknown, manifested itself. They lingered over tea discussing gold and the price of gold, the signification of which was now firmly grasped by everybody, and there were frightful searchings of heart on the part of the Mapp-Flints and Diva as to whether to sell out and realize their gains, or to invest more in hopes of a further rise. And never had Lucia shown herself more nauseatingly Olympian. She referred to her ‘few shares’ when everybody knew she had bought five hundred to begin with and had made one if not two more purchases since, and she held forth as if she was a City Editor herself.

  ‘I was telephoning to my broker this morning,’ she began.

  ‘What? A trunk-call?’ interrupted Diva. ‘Half a crown, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very likely: and put my view of the situation about gold before him. He agreed with me that the price of gold was very high already, and that if, as I suggested, America might come off the gold standard – however, that is a very complicated problem; and I hope to hear from him to-morrow morning about it. Then we had a few words about English rails. Undeniably there have been much better traffic returns lately, and I am distinctly of the opinion that one might do worse –’

  Diva was looking haggard. She ate hardly any chocolates, and had already confessed that she was sleeping very badly.

  ‘Don’t talk to me about English rails,’ she said. ‘The price of gold is worrying enough.’