Lucia Victrix

  ‘So good of you to let us come, dear Susan,’ she said. ‘I have very great experience in psychical phenomena: adepts – do you remember the Guru at Riseholme, Georgie? – adepts always tell me that I should be a marvellous medium if I had time to devote myself to the occult.’

  Susan held up her hand.

  ‘Hush,’ she whispered. ‘Surely I heard “Tweet, tweet”, which means Blue Birdie is here. Good afternoon, darling.’

  She put the fire-shovel into the fender.

  ‘Very promising,’ she said. ‘Blue Birdie doesn’t usually make himself heard so soon, and it always means I’m going into trance. It must be you, Lucia, who have contributed to the psychic force.’

  ‘Very likely,’ said Lucia, ‘the Guru always said I had immense power.’

  ‘Turn out the lights then, Algernon, all but the little ruby lamp by my paper, and I will undraw the curtains of the shrine. Tweet, tweet! There it is again, and that lost feeling is coming over me.’

  Lucia had been thinking desperately, while Ophelia got ready, with that intense concentration which, so often before, had smoothed out the most crumpled situations. She gave a silvery laugh.

  ‘I heard it, I heard it,’ she exclaimed to Algernon’s great surprise. ‘Buona sera, Blue Birdie. Have you come to see Mummie and Auntie Lucia from Spicy Islands? … Oh, I’m sure I felt a little brush of soft feathers on my cheek.’

  ‘No! did you really?’ asked Susan with the slightest touch of jealousy in her voice. ‘My pencil, Algernon.’

  Lucia gave a swift glance at the shrine, as Susan drew the curtains, and was satisfied that the most spiritually enlightened eye could not see that it was empty. But dark though the room was, it was as if fresh candles were being profusely lit in her brain, as on some High Altar dedicated to Ingenuity. She kept her eyes fixed on Susan’s hand poised over her paper. It was recording very little: an occasional dot or dash was all the inspiration Blue Birdie could give. For herself, she exclaimed now and then that she felt in the dark the brush of the bird’s wing, or heard that pretty note. Each time she saw that the pencil paused. Then the last and the greatest candle was lit in her imagination, and she waited calm and composed for the conclusion of the séance, when Susan would see that the shrine was empty.

  They sat in the dim ruby light for half an hour, and Susan, as if not quite lost, gave an annoyed exclamation.

  ‘Very disappointing,’ she said. ‘Turn on the light, Algernon. Blue Birdie began so well and now nothing is coming through.’

  Before he could get to the switch, Lucia, with a great gasp of excitement, fell back in her chair, and covered her eyes with her hands.

  ‘Something wonderful has happened,’ she chanted. ‘Blue Birdie has left us altogether. What a manifestation!’

  Still not even peeping, she heard Susan’s voice rise to a scream.

  ‘But the shrine’s empty!’ she cried. ‘Where is Blue Birdie, Algernon?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said the Jesuit. ‘What has happened?’

  Lucia still sat with covered eyes.

  ‘Did I not tell you before the light was turned on that there had been a great manifestation?’ she asked. ‘I knew the shrine would be empty! Let me look for myself.’

  ‘Not a feather!’ she said. ‘The dematerialization is complete. Oh, what would not the President of the Psychical Research have given to be present! Only a few minutes ago, Susan and I – did we not, Susan? – heard his little salutation, and I, at any rate, felt his feathers brush my cheek. Now no trace! Never, in all my experience, have I seen anything so perfect.’

  ‘But what does it mean?’ asked the distraught Susan, pulling the wreath from her dishevelled hair. Lucia waved her hands in a mystical movement.

  ‘Dear Susan,’ she said, beginning to gabble, ‘Listen! All these weeks your darling’s spirit has been manifesting itself to you and to me also to-night, with its pretty chirps and strokes of the wing, in order to convince you of its presence, earth-bound and attached to its mortal remains. Now on the astral plane Blue Birdie has been able so to flood them with spiritual reality that they have been dissolved, translated – ah, how badly I put it – into spirit. Blue Birdie has been helping you all these weeks to realize that all is spirit. Now you have this final, supreme demonstration. Rapt with all of him that was mortal into a higher sphere!’

  ‘But won’t he ever come back?’ asked Susan.

  ‘Ah, you would not be so selfish as to wish that!’ said Lucia. ‘He is free; he is earth-bound no longer, and, by this miracle of dematerialization, has given you proof of that. Let me see what his last earthly communication with you was.’

  Lucia picked up the sheet on which Susan had automatically recorded a few undecipherable scribbles.

  ‘I knew it!’ she cried. ‘See, there is nothing but those few scrawled lines. Your sweet bird’s spirit was losing connection with the material sphere; he was rising above it. How it all hangs together!’

  ‘I shall miss him dreadfully,’ said Susan in a faltering voice.

  ‘But you mustn’t, you mustn’t. You cannot grudge him his freedom. And, oh, what a privilege to have assisted at such a demonstration! Ennobling! And if my small powers added to yours, dear, helped toward such a beautiful result, why that is more than a privilege.’

  Georgie felt sure that there was hocus-pocus somewhere, and that Lucia had had a hand in it, but his probings, as they walked away, only elicited from her idiotic replies such as ‘Too marvellous! What a privilege!’

  It soon became known in marketing circles next morning that very remarkable necromancy had occurred at Starling Cottage, that Blue Birdie had fluttered about the darkened room, uttering his sharp cries, and had several times brushed against the cheek of the Mayor. Then, wonder of wonders, his mortal remains had vanished. Mr Wyse walked up and down the High Street, never varying his account of the phenomena, but unable to explain them, and for the first time for some days Susan appeared in her Royce, but without any cockade in her hat.

  There was something mysterious and incredible about it all, but it did not usurp the entire attention of Tilling, for why did Elizabeth, from whom violent sarcasm might have been expected, seem to shun conversation? She stole rapidly from shop to shop, and, when cornered by Diva, coming out of the butcher’s, she explained, scarcely opening her lips at all, that she had a relaxed throat, and must only breathe through her nose.

  ‘I should open my mouth wide,’ said Diva severely, ‘and have a good gargle,’ but Elizabeth only shook her head with an odd smile, and passed on. ‘Looks a bit hollow-cheeked, too,’ thought Diva. By contrast, Lucia was far from hollow-cheeked; she had a swollen face, and made no secret of her appointment with the dentist to have ‘it’ out. From there she went home, with the expectation of receiving, later in the day, a denture comprising a few molars with a fresh attachment added.

  She ate her lunch, in the fashion of a rabbit, with her front teeth.

  ‘Such a skilful extraction, Georgie,’ she said, ‘but a little sore.’

  As she had a Council meeting that afternoon, Georgie went off alone in the motor for his assignation with the boy from the bicycle-shop. The séance last evening still puzzled him, but he felt more certain than ever that her exclamations that she heard chirpings and felt the brush of Birdie’s wing were absolute rubbish; so, too, was her gabble that her psychic powers added to Susan’s, had brought about the dematerialization. ‘All bosh,’ he said aloud in an annoyed voice, ‘and it only confirms her complicity. It’s very unkind of her not to tell me how she faked it, when she knows how I would enjoy it.’

  His bicycle was ready for him; he mounted without the slightest difficulty, and the boy was soon left far behind. Then with secret trepidation he observed not far ahead a man with a saucepan of tar simmering over a fire-pot. As he got close, he was aware of a silly feeling in his head that it was exercising a sort of fascination over his machine, but by keeping his eye on the road he got safely by it, though with frightful wobbles, a
nd dismounted for a short rest.

  ‘Well, that’s a disappointment,’ observed the operator. ‘You ain’t a patch on the lady who knocked down my fire-pot twice ‘yesterday.’

  Suddenly Georgie remembered the dab of tar on Lucia’s shoe, and illumination flooded his brain.

  ‘No! Did she indeed?’ he said with great interest. ‘The same lady twice? That was bad riding!’

  ‘Oh, something shocking. Not that I’d ever seek to hinder her, for she gave me half a crown per upset. Ain’t she coming to-day?’

  As he rode home Georgie again meditated on Lucia’s secretiveness. Why could she not tell him about her jugglings at the séance yesterday and about her antics with the fire-pot? Even to him she had to keep up this incessant flow of triumphant achievement both in occult matters and in riding a bicycle. Now that they were man and wife she ought to be more open with him. ‘But I’ll tickle her up about the fire-pot,’ he thought vindictively.

  When he got home he found Lucia just returned from a most satisfactory Council meeting.

  ‘We got through our business most expeditiously,’ she said, ‘for Elizabeth was absent, and so there were fewer irrelevant interruptions. I wonder what ailed her: nothing serious I hope. She was rather odd in the High Street this morning. No smiles: she scarcely opened her mouth when I spoke to her. And did you make good progress on your bicycle this afternoon?’

  ‘Admirable,’ said he. ‘Perfect steering. There was a man with a fire-pot tarring a telegraph-post –’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ interrupted Lucia. ‘Tar keeps off insects that burrow into the wood. Let us go and have tea.’

  ‘– and an odd feeling came over me,’ he continued firmly, ‘that just because I must avoid it, I should very likely run into it. Have you ever felt that? I suppose not.’

  ‘Yes, indeed I have in my earlier stages,’ said Lucia cordially. ‘But I can give you an absolute cure for it. Fix your eyes straight ahead, and you’ll have no bother at all.’

  ‘So I found. The man was a chatty sort of fellow. He told me that some learner on a bicycle had knocked over the pot twice yesterday. Can you imagine such awkwardness? I am pleased to have got past that stage.’

  Lucia did not show by the wink of an eyelid that this arrow had pierced her, and Georgie, in spite of his exasperation, could not help admiring such nerve.

  ‘Capital!’ she said. ‘I expect you’ve quite caught me up by your practice to-day. Now after my Council meeting I think I must relax. A little music, dear?’

  A melodious half-hour followed. They were both familiar with Beethoven’s famous Fifth Symphony, as arranged for four hands on the piano, and played it with ravishing sensibility.

  ‘Caro, how it takes one out of all petty carpings and schemings!’ said Lucia at the end. ‘How all our smallnesses are swallowed up in that broad cosmic splendour! And how beautifully you played, dear. Inspired! I almost stopped in order to listen to you.’

  Georgie writhed under these compliments: he could hardly switch back to dark hints about séances and fire-pots after them. In strong rebellion against his kindlier feelings towards her, he made himself comfortable by the fire, while Lucia again tackled the catechism imposed on her by the Directors of the Southern Railway. Fatigued by his bicycle-ride, Georgie fell into a pleasant slumber.

  Presently Grosvenor entered, carrying a small packet, neatly wrapped up and sealed. Lucia put her finger to her lip with a glance at her sleeping husband, and Grosvenor withdrew in tiptoe silence. Lucia knew what this packet must contain; she could slip the reconstituted denture into her mouth in a moment, and there would be no more rabbit-nibbling at dinner. She opened the packet and took out of the cotton-wool wrapping what it contained.

  It was impossible to suppress a shrill exclamation, and Georgie awoke with a start. Beneath the light of Lucia’s reading-lamp there gleamed in her hand something dazzling, something familiar.

  ‘My dear, what have you got?’ he cried. ‘Why, it’s Elizabeth’s front teeth! It’s Elizabeth’s widest smile without any of her face! But how? Why? Blue Birdie’s nothing to this.’

  Lucia made haste to wrap up the smile again.

  ‘Of course it is,’ she said. ‘I knew it was familiar, and the moment you said “smile” I recognized it. That explains Elizabeth’s shut mouth this morning. An accident to her smile, and now by some extraordinary mistake the dentist has sent it back to me. Me of all people! What are we to do?’

  ‘Send it back to Elizabeth,’ suggested Georgie, ‘with a polite note saying it was addressed to you, and that you opened it. Serve her right, the deceitful woman! How often has she said that she never had any bother with her teeth, and hadn’t been to a dentist since she was a child, and didn’t know what toothache meant. No wonder; that kind doesn’t ache.’

  ‘Yes, that would serve her right –’ began Lucia.

  She paused. She began to think intensely. If Elizabeth’s entire smile had been sent to her, where, except to Elizabeth, had her own more withdrawn aids to mastication been sent? Elizabeth could not possibly identify those four hinterland molars, unless she had been preternaturally observant, but the inference would be obvious if Lucia personally sent her back her smile.

  ‘No, Georgie; that wouldn’t be kind,’ she said. ‘Poor Elizabeth would never dare to smile at me again, if she knew I knew. I don’t deny she richly deserves it for telling all those lies, but it would be an unworthy action. It is by a pure accident that we know, and we must not use it against her. I shall instantly send this box back to the dentist’s.’

  ‘But how do you know who her dentist is?’ asked Georgie.

  ‘Mr Fergus,’ said Lucia, ‘who took my tooth so beautifully this morning; there was his card with the packet. I shall merely say that I am utterly at a loss to understand why this has been sent me, and not knowing what the intended destination was, I return it.’

  Grosvenor entered again. She bore a sealed packet precisely similar to that which now again contained Elizabeth’s smile.

  ‘With a note, ma’am,’ she said. ‘And the boy is waiting for a packet left here by mistake.’

  ‘Oh, do open it,’ said Georgie gaily. ‘Somebody else’s teeth, I expect. I wonder if we shall recognize them. Quite a new game, and most exciting.’

  Hardly were the words out of his mouth when he perceived what must have happened. How on earth could Lucia get out of such an awkward situation? But it took far more than that to disconcert the Mayor of Tilling. She gave Grosvenor the other packet.

  ‘A sample or two of tea that I was expecting,’ she said in her most casual voice. ‘Yes, from Twistevant’s.’ And she put the sample into a drawer of her table.

  Who could fail to admire, thought Georgie, this brazen composure?

  6

  Elizabeth’s relaxed throat had completely braced itself by next morning, and at shopping-time she was profuse in her thanks to Diva.

  ‘I followed your advice, dear, and gargled well when I got home,’ she said, ‘and not a trace of it this morning … Ah, here’s Worship and Mr Georgie. I was just telling Diva how quickly her prescription cured my poor throat; I simply couldn’t speak yesterday. And I hope you’re better, Worship. It must be a horrid thing to have a tooth out.’

  Lucia and Georgie scrutinized her smile … There was no doubt about it.

  ‘Ah, you’re one of the lucky ones,’ said Lucia in tones of fervent congratulation. ‘How I envied you your beautiful teeth when Mr Fergus said he must take one of mine out.’

  ‘I envy you too,’ said Georgie. ‘We all do.’

  These felicitations seemed to speed Elizabeth’s departure. She shut off her smile, and tripped across the street to tell the Padre that her throat was well again, and that she would be able to sing alto as usual in the choir on Sunday. With a slightly puzzled face he joined the group she had just left.

  ‘Queer doings indeed!’ he said in a sarcastic voice. ‘Everything in Tilling seems to be vanishing. There’s Mistress Mapp-Flint’s relaxed thro
at, her as couldn’t open her mouth yesterday. And there’s Mistress Wyse’s little bird. Dematerialized, they say. Havers! And there’s Major Benjy’s riding-whip. Very strange indeed. I canna’ make nothing of it a’.’

  The subject did not lead to much. Lucia had nothing to say about Blue Birdie, nor Diva about the riding-whip. She turned to Georgie.

  ‘My tulip-bulbs have just come for my garden,’ she said. ‘Do spare a minute and tell me where and how to plant them. Doing it all myself. No gardener. Going to have an open-air tea-place in the spring. Want it to be a bower.’

  The group dispersed. Lucia went to the bicycle-shop to order machines for the afternoon. She thought it would be better to change the venue and appointed the broad, firm stretch of sands beyond the golf-links, where she and Georgie could practise turning without dismounting, and where there would be no risk of encountering fire-pots. Georgie went with Diva into her back-garden.

  ‘Things,’ explained Diva, ‘can be handed out of the kitchen window. So convenient. And where shall I have the tulips?’

  ‘All along that bed,’ said Georgie. ‘Give me a trowel and the bulbs. I’ll show you.’

  Diva stood admiringly by.

  ‘What a neat hole!’ she said.

  ‘Press the bulb firmly down, but without force,’ said Georgie.

  ‘I see. And then you cover it up, and put the earth back again –’

  ‘And the next about three inches away –’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear. What a quantity it will take!’ said Diva. ‘And do you believe in Elizabeth’s relaxed throat. I don’t. I’ve been wondering –’

  Through the open window of the kitchen came the unmistakable sound of a kettle boiling over.

  ‘Shan’t be a minute,’ she said. ‘Stupid Janet. Must have gone to do the rooms and left it on the fire.’