Next morning there came a mute and terrible message from the sea. The fog had cleared, the day was of crystalline brightness, and since air and exercise would be desirable after sitting at home all the day before, and drinking that wonderful pre-war whisky, Major Benjy set off by the eleven o’clock tram to play a round of golf with the Padre. Though hope was fast expiring, neither of them said anything definitely indicating that they no longer really expected to see their friends again, but there had been talk indirectly bearing on the catastrophe; the Major had asked casually whether Mallards was a freehold, and the Padre replied that both it and Grebe were the property of their occupiers and not held on lease; he also made a distant allusion to memorial services, saying he had been to one lately, very affecting. Then Major Benjy lost his temper with the caddie, and their game assumed a more normal aspect.
They had now come to the eighth hole, the tee of which was perched high like a pulpit on the sand-dunes and overlooked the sea. The match was most exciting: hole after hole had been halved in brilliant sixes and sevens, the players were both on the top of their form, and in their keenness had quite banished from their minds the overshadowing anxiety. Here Major Benjy topped his ball into a clump of bents immediately in front of the tee, and when he had finished swearing at his caddie for moving on the stroke, the Padre put his iron shot on to the green.
‘A glorious day,’ he exclaimed, and, turning to pick up his clubs, gazed out seawards. The tide was low, and an immense stretch of ‘shining sands’ as in Charles Kingsley’s poem was spread in front of him. Then he gave a gasp.
‘What’s that?’ he said to Major Benjy, pointing with a shaking finger.
‘Good God,’ said Major Benjy. ‘Pick up my ball, caddie.’ They scrambled down the steep dunes and walked across the sands to where lay this object which had attracted the Padre’s attention. It was an immense kitchen-table upside down with its legs in the air, wet with brine but still in perfect condition. Without doubt it was the one which they had seen two days before whirling out to sea. But now it was by itself, no ladies were sitting upon it. The Padre bared his head.
‘Shall we abandon our game, Major?’ he said. ‘We had better telephone from the Club-house to the Mayor. And I must arrange to get some men to bring the table back. It’s far too heavy for us to think of moving it.’
The news that the table had come ashore spread swiftly through Tilling, and Georgie, hearing that the Padre had directed that when it had passed the Custom House it should be brought to the Vicarage, went round there at once. It seemed almost unfeeling in this first shock of bereavement to think about tables, but it would save a great deal of bother afterwards to see to this now. The table surely belonged to Grebe.
‘I quite understand your point of view,’ he said to the Padre, ‘and of course what is found on the seashore in a general way belongs to the finder, if it’s a few oranges in a basket, because nobody knows who the real owner is. But we all know, at least we’re afraid we do, where this came from.’
The Padre was quite reasonable.
‘You mean it ought to go back to Grebe,’ he said. ‘Yes, I agree. Ah, I see it has arrived.’
They went out into the street, where a trolley, bearing the table, had just drawn up. Then a difficulty arose. It was late, and the bearers demurred to taking it all the way out to Grebe to-night and carrying it through the garden.
‘Move it in here then for the night,’ said the Padre. ‘You can get it through the back-yard and into the outhouse.’
Georgie felt himself bound to object to this: the table belonged to Grebe, and it looked as if Grebe, alas, belonged to him.
‘I think it had better come to Mallards Cottage,’ said he firmly. ‘It’s only just round the corner, and it can stand in my yard.’
The Padre was quite willing that it should go back to Grebe, but why should Georgie claim this object with all the painful interest attached to it? After all, he had found it.
‘And so I don’t quite see why you should have it,’ he said a little stiffly.
Georgie took him aside.
‘It’s dreadful to talk about it so soon,’ he said, ‘but that is what I should like done with it. You see Lucia left me Grebe and all its contents. I still cling—can’t help it—to the hope that neither it nor they may ever be mine, but in the interval which may elapse—’
‘No! Really!’ said the Padre with a sudden thrill of Tillingite interest which it was no use trying to suppress. ‘I congrat—Well, well. Of course the kitchen-table is yours. Very proper.’
The trolley started again and by dint of wheedlings and cunning coaxings the sad substantial relic was induced to enter the back-yard of Mallards Cottage. Here for the present it would have to remain, but pickled as it was with long immersion in sea water, the open air could not possibly hurt it, and if it rained, so much the better, for it would wash the salt out.
Georgie, very tired and haggard with these harrowing arrangements, had a little rest on his sofa, when he had seen the table safely bestowed. His cook gave him a succulent and most nutritious dinner by way of showing her sympathy, and Foljambe waited on him with peculiar attention, constantly holding a pocket-handkerchief to the end of her nose, by way of expressing her own grief. Afterwards he moved to his sitting-room and took up his needlework, that ‘sad narcotic exercise’, and looked his loss in the face.
Indeed, it was difficult to imagine what life would be like without Lucia, but there was no need to imagine it, for he was experiencing it already. There was nothing to look forward to, and he realized how completely Lucia and her manoeuvres and her indomitable vitality and her deceptions and her greatnesses had supplied the salt to life. He had never been in the least in love with her, but somehow she had been as absorbing as any wayward and entrancing mistress. ‘It will be too dull for anything,’ thought he, ‘and there won’t be a single day in which I shan’t miss her most dreadfully. It’s always been like that: when she was away from Riseholme, I never seemed to care to paint or to play, except because I should show her what I had done when she came back, and now she’ll never come back.’
He abandoned himself for quite a long time to despair with regard to what life would hold for him. Nobody else, not even Foljambe, seemed to matter at all. But then through the black, deep waters of his tribulation there began to appear little bubbles on the surface. It was like comparing a firefly with the huge night itself to weigh them against this all-encompassing darkness, but where for a moment each pricked the surface there was, it was idle to deny, just a spark that stood out momentarily against the blackness. The table, for instance: he would have a tablet fixed on to it, with a suitable inscription to record the tragic role it had played, a text, so to speak, as on a cenotaph. How would Lucia’s last words do? ‘Just wait till we come back.’ But if this was a memorial table, it must record that Lucia was not coming back.
He fetched a writing-pad and began again. ‘This is the table—’ but that wouldn’t do. It suggested ‘This is the house that Jack built.’ Then, ‘It was upon this table on Boxing Day afternoon, 1930, that Mrs Emmeline Lucas, of Grebe, and Miss Elizabeth Mapp, of Mallards—’ that was too prolix. Then, ‘In memory of Emmeline Lucas and Elizabeth Mapp. They went to sea—’ but that sounded like a nursery rhyme by Edward Lear, or it might suggest to future generations that they were sailors. Then he wondered if poetry would supply anything, and the lines, ‘And may there be no sadness of farewell, when I embark,’ occurred to him. But that wouldn’t do: people would wonder why she had embarked on a kitchen-table, and even now, when the event was so lamentably recent, nobody actually knew.
‘I hadn’t any idea,’ thought Georgie, ‘how difficult it is to write a few well-chosen and heart-felt words. I shall go and look at the tombstones in the churchyard to-morrow. Lucia would have thought of something perfect at once.’
Tiny as were these bubbles and others (larger ones) which Georgie refused to look at directly, they made a momentary, an evanescent brightness.
Some of them made quite loud pops as they burst, and some presented problems. This catastrophe had conveyed a solemn warning against living in a house so low-lying, and Major Benjy had already expressed that sentiment when he gave vent to that self-centred cri du coeur ‘Thank God I live on a hill,’ but for Georgie that question would soon become a practical one, though he would not attempt to make up his mind yet. It would be absurd to have two houses in Tilling, to be the tenant of Mallards Cottage, and the owner of Grebe. Or should he live in Grebe during the summer, when there was no fear of floods, and Mallards Cottage in the winter?
He got into bed: the sympathetic Foljambe, before going home, had made a beautiful fire, and his hot-water bottle was of such a temperature that he could not put his feet on it at all… If he lived at Grebe she would only have to go back across the garden to her Cadman, if Cadman remained in his service. Then there was Lucia’s big car. He supposed that would be included in the contents of Grebe. Then he must remember to put a black bow on Lucia’s picture in the Art Exhibition. Then he got sleepy…
CHAPTER 11
Though Georgie had thought that there would be nothing interesting left in life now that Lucia was gone, and though Tilling generally was conscious that the termination of the late rivalries would take all thrill out of existence as well as eclipsing its gaieties most dreadfully, it proved one morning when the sad days had begun to add themselves into weeks, that there was a great deal for him to do, as well as a great deal for Tilling to talk about. Lucia had employed a local lawyer over the making of her will, and to-day Mr Causton (re the affairs of Mrs Emmeline Lucas) came to see Georgie about it. He explained to him with a manner subtly compounded of sympathy and congratulation that the little sum of money to which Lucia had alluded was no less than £80,000. Georgie was, in fact, apart from certain legacies, her heir. He was much moved.
‘Too kind of her,’ he said. ‘I had no idea—’
Mr Causton went on with great delicacy.
‘It will be some months,’ he said, ‘before in the absence of fresh evidence, the death of my client can be legally assumed—’
‘Oh, the longer, the better,’ said Georgie rather vaguely, wiping his eyes, ‘but what do you mean about fresh evidence?’
‘The recovery, by washing ashore or other identification, of the lamented corpses,’ said Mr Causton. ‘In the interval the—the possibly late Mrs Lucas has left no provision for the contingency we have to face. If and when her death is proved, the staff of servants will receive their wages up to date and a month’s notice. Until then the estate, I take it, will be liable for the out-goings and the upkeep of Grebe. I would see to all that, but I felt that I must get your authority first.’
‘Of course, naturally,’ said Georgie.
‘But here a difficulty arises,’ said Mr Causton. ‘I have no authority for drawing on the late—or, we hope, the present Mrs Lucas’s balance at the bank. There is, you see, no fund out of which the current expenses of the upkeep of the house can be paid. There is more than a month’s food and wages for her servants already owing.’
George’s face changed a little. A very little.
‘I had better pay them myself,’ he said. ‘Would not that be the proper course?’
‘I think, under the circumstances, that it would,’ said Mr Causton. ‘In fact, I don’t see what else is to be done, unless all the servants were discharged at once, and the house shut up.’
‘No, that would never do,’ said Georgie. ‘I must go down there and arrange about it all. If Mrs Lucas returns, how horrid for her to find all her servants who had been with her so long, gone. Everything must carry on as if she had only gone for a visit somewhere and forgotten to send a cheque for expenses.’
Here then, at any rate, was something to do already, and Georgie, thinking that he would like a little walk on this brisk morning, and also feeling sure that he would like a little conversation with friends in the High Street, put on his thinner cape, for a hint of spring was in the air, and there were snowdrops abloom in the flower-border of his little garden. Lucia, he remembered, always detested snowdrops: they hung their heads and were feeble; they typified for her slack though amiable inefficiency. In order to traverse the whole length of the High Street and get as many conversations as possible he went down by Mallards and Major Benjy’s house. The latter, from the window of his study, where he so often enjoyed a rest or a little refreshment before and after his game of golf, saw him pass, and beckoned him in.
‘Good morning, old boy,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a tremendous slice of luck: at least that is not quite the way to put it, but what I mean is—In fact, I’ve just had a visit from the solicitor of our lamented friend Elizabeth Mapp, God bless her, and he told me the most surprising news. I was monstrously touched by it: hadn’t a notion of it, I assure you.’
‘You don’t mean to say,’ began Georgie.
‘Yes I do. He informed me of the provisions of that dear woman’s will. In memory of our long friendship, these were the very words—and I assure you I was not ashamed to turn away and wipe my eyes, when he told me—in memory of our long friendship she has left me that beautiful Mallards and the sum of ten thousand pounds, which I understand was the bulk of her fortune. What do you think of that?’ he asked, allowing his exultation to get the better of him for the moment.
‘No!’ said Georgie, ‘I congratulate—at least in case—’
‘I know,’ said Major Benjy. ‘If it turns out to be too true that our friends have gone for ever, you’re friendly enough to be glad that what I’ve told you is too true, too. Eh?’
‘Quite, and I’ve had a visit from Mr Causton,’ said Georgie, unable to contain himself any longer, ‘and Lucia’s left me Grebe and eighty thousand pounds.’
‘My word! What a monstrous fortune,’ cried the Major with a spasm of chagrin. ‘I congrat—Anyhow, the same to you. I shall get a motor instead of going to my golf on that measly tram. Then there’s Mallards for me to arrange about. I’m thinking of letting it furnished, servants and all. It’ll be snapped up at ten guineas a week. Why, she got fifteen last summer from the other poor corpse.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Georgie. ‘Supposing she came back and found she couldn’t get into her house for another month because you had let it?’
‘God grant she may come back,’ said the Major, without falling dead on the spot. ‘But I see your point: it would be awkward. I’ll think it over. Anyhow, of course, after a proper interval, when the tragedy is proved, I shall go and live there myself. Till then I shall certainly pay the servants’ wages and the upkeep. Rather a drain, but it can’t be helped. Board wages of twelve shillings a week is what I shall give them: they’ll live like fighting cocks on that. By jove, when I think of that terrible sight of the kitchen-table lying out there on the beach, it causes me such a sinking still. Have a drink: wonderful pre-war whisky.’
Georgie had not yet visited Grebe, and he found a thrilling though melancholy interest in seeing the starting-point of the catastrophe. The Christmas-tree, he ascertained, had stuck in the door of the kitchen, and the Padre had already been down to look at it, but had decided that the damage to it was irreparable. It was lying now in the garden from which soil and plants had been swept away by the flood, but Georgie could not bear to see it there, and directed that it should be put up, as a relic, in an empty outhouse. Perhaps a tablet on that as well as on the table. Then he had to interview Grosvenor, and make out a schedule of the servants’ wages, the total of which rather astonished him. He saw the cook and told her that he had the kitchen-table in his yard, but she begged him not to send it back, as it had always been most inconvenient. Mrs Lucas, she told him, had had a feeling for it; she thought there was luck about it. Then she burst into tears and said it hadn’t brought her mistress much luck after all. This was all dreadfully affecting, and Georgie told her that in this period of waiting during which they must not give up hope, all their wages would be paid as usual, and they must carry on as before, and
keep the house in order. Then there were some unpaid bills of Lucia’s, a rather appalling total, which must be discharged before long, and the kitchen must be renovated from the effects of the flood. It was after dark when he got back to Mallards Cottage again.
In the absence of what Mr Causton called further evidence in the way of corpses, and of alibis in the way of living human bodies, the Padre settled in the course of the next week to hold a memorial service, for unless one was held soon, they would all have got used to the bereavement, and the service would lose point and poignancy. It was obviously suitable that Major Benjy and Georgie, being the contingent heirs of the defunct ladies, should sit by themselves in a front pew as chief mourners, and Major Benjy ordered a black suit to be made for him without delay for use on this solemn occasion. The church bell was tolled as if for a funeral service, and the two walked in side by side after the rest of the congregation had assembled, and took their places in a pew by themselves immediately in front of the reading-desk.
The service was of the usual character, and the Padre gave a most touching address on the text ‘They were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their death they were not divided.’ He reminded his hearers how the two whom they mourned were as sisters, taking the lead in social activities, and dispensing to all who knew them their bountiful hospitalities. Their lives had been full of lovable energy. They had been at the forefront in all artistic and literary pursuits: indeed he might almost have taken the whole of the verse of which he had read them only the half as his text, and have added that they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions. One of them had been known to them all for many years, and the name of Elizabeth Mapp was written on their hearts. The other was a newer comer, but she had wonderfully endeared herself to them in her briefer sojourn here, and it was typical of her beautiful nature that on the very day on which the disaster occurred, she had been busy with a Christmas-tree for the choristers in whom she took so profound an interest.