The plaintive throaty bleating of the vox humana was enervatingly lovely, and Lucia’s America-cloth eyes grew veiled with moisture.
“So heart-broken,” she intoned, her syllables keeping time with the air. “A lovely contralto tone. Like Clara Butt, is it not? The passionate despair of it. Fresh courage coming. So noble. No, Georgie, you must take care not to put your foot on two adjacent pedals at once. Now, listen! Do you hear that lovely crescendo? That I do by just opening the swell very gradually. Isn’t it a wonderful effect?… I am surprised that no one has ever thought of setting this Sonata for the organ… Go on pulling out stops on the great organ—yes, to your left there—in case I want them. One always has to look ahead in organ playing. Arrange your palette, so to speak. No, I shan’t want them… It dies away, softer and softer… Hold on that bass C sharp till I say now… Now.”
They both gave the usual slow movement sigh. Then the volume of Beethoven tumbled on to the great organ on which Georgie had pulled out all the stops, and the open diapasons received it with a shout of rapture. Lucia slipped from the bench to pick it up. On the floor round about was an assemblage of small pipes.
“I think this lot is the cor anglais,” she said. “I am putting in a beautiful cor anglais.”
She picked up one of the pipes, and blew through it.
“A lovely tone,” she said. “It reminds one of the last act of Tristan, does it not, where the shepherd-boy goes on playing the cor anglais for ever and ever.”
Georgie picked up a pipe belonging to the flute. It happened to be a major third above Lucia’s cor anglais, and they blew on them together with a very charming effect. They tried two others, but these happened to be a semitone apart, and the result was not so harmonious. Then they hastily put them down, for a party of tourists, being shown round the church by the Padre, came in at the north door. He was talking very strong Scots this morning, with snatches of early English in compliment to the architecture.
“The orrgan, ye see, is being renovated,” he said. “‘Twill be a bonny instrument, I ken. Good morrow to ye, Mistress Lucas.”
Then, as she and Georgie passed him on their way out, he added in an audible aside: “The leddy whose munificence has given it to the church. Eh, a grand benefaction. A thousand pounds and mair, what wi’ lutes and psaltery, and a’ the whustles.”
“I often go and have a little practice on my organ during the workmen’s dinner-hour,” said Lucia as they stepped out into the hot sunshine. “The organ, Georgie, I find is a far simpler instrument on which to get your effects than the piano. The stops supply expression: you just pull them out or push them in. That vox humana, for instance, with what ease one gets the singing tone, that’s so difficult on the piano.”
“You’ve picked it up wonderfully quickly,” said Georgie. “I thought you had a beautiful touch. And when will your organ be finished?”
“In a month or less, I hope. We must have a service of dedication and a recital: the Padre, I know, will carry out my wishes about that. Georgie, I think I shall open the recital myself. I am sure that Tilling would wish it. I should play some little piece, and then make way for the organist. I might do worse than give them that first movement of the ‘Moonlight.’”
“I’m sure Tilling would be much disappointed if you didn’t,” said Georgie warmly. “May I play the pedals for you?”
“I was going to suggest that, and help me with the stops. I have progressed, I know, and I’m glad you like my touch, but I hardly think I could manage the whole complicated business alone yet. Festina lente. Let us practice in the dinner-hour every day. If I give the ‘Moonlight’ it must be exquisitely performed. I must shew them what can be done with it when the orchestral colour of the organ is added.”
“I promise to work hard,” said Georgie. “And I do think, as the Padre said to the tourists just now, that it’s a most munificent gift.”
“Oh, did he say that?” asked Lucia who had heard perfectly. “That was why they all turned round and looked at me. But, as you know, it was always my intention to devote a great part, anyhow, of what I made on the Stock Exchange to the needs of our dear Tilling.”
“Very generous, all the same,” repeated Georgie.
“No, dear; simple duty. That’s how I see it… Now what have I got to do this afternoon? That tea-party for the school-children: a hundred and twenty are coming. Tea in the garden in the shade, and then games and races. You’ll be helping me all the time, won’t you? Only four o’clock till seven.”
“Oh dear: I’m not very good with children,” said Georgie. “Children are so sticky, particularly after tea, and I won’t run a race with anybody.”
“You shan’t run a race. But you’ll help to start them, won’t you, and find their mothers for them and that sort of thing. I know I can depend on you, and children always adore you. Let me see: do I dine with you to-night or you with me?”
“You with me. And then to-morrow’s your great dinner-party. I tell you I’m rather nervous, for there are so many things we mustn’t talk about, that there’s scarcely a safe subject. It’ll be the first complete party anyone’s had since that frightful evening at the Wyses’.”
“It was clearly my duty to respond to Diva’s appeal,” said Lucia, “and all we’ve got to do is to make a great deal of poor Elizabeth. She’s had a horrid time, most humiliating, Georgie, and what makes it worse for her is that it was so much her own fault. Four o’clock then, dear, this afternoon, or perhaps a little before.”
Lucia let herself into her house, musing at considerable length on the frightful things that had happened since that night at the Wyses’ to which Georgie had alluded, when Elizabeth and Benjy had set out in their goloshes, to walk back to Grebe. That was an unwise step, for the fresh night air had made Benjy much worse, and the curate returning home on the other side of the High Street after a meeting of the Band of Hope (such a contrast) had witnessed dreadful goings-on. Benjy had stood in the middle of the road, compelling a motor to pull up with a shriek of brakes, and asked to see the driver’s license, insisting that he was a policeman in plain clothes on point duty. When that was settled in a most sympathetic manner by a real policeman, Benjy informed him that Msslucas was a regular stunner, and began singing “You are Queen of my heart to-night.” At that point the curate, pained but violently interested, reluctantly let himself into his house, and there was no information to be had with regard to the rest of their walk home to Grebe. Then the sad tale was resumed, for Withers told Foljambe (who told Georgie who told Lucia) that Major Mapp-Flint on arrival had, no doubt humorously, suggested getting his gun and shooting the remaining tiger-skins in the hall, but that Mrs. Mapp-Flint wouldn’t hear of it and was not amused. “Rather the reverse,” said Withers… Bed.
The curate felt bound to tell his spiritual superior about the scene in the High Street and Evie told Diva, so that by the time Elizabeth came up with her market-basket next morning, this sad sequel to the Wyses’ dinner party was known everywhere. She propitiated Diva by paying her the ninepence which had been in dispute, and went so far as to apologise to her for her apparent curtness at the bridge-table last night. Then, having secured a favourable hearing, she told Diva how she had found Benjy sitting close to Lucia with his hand on her knee. “He had had more to drink than he should,” she said, “but never would he have done that unless she had encouraged him. That’s her nature, I’m afraid: she can’t leave men alone. She’s no better than the Pride of Poona!”
So, when Diva met Lucia half an hour afterwards, she could not resist being distinctly “arch” about her long tête-à-tête with Benjy during the first rubber. Lucia, not appreciating this archness, had answered not a word, but turned her back and went into Twistevant’s. Diva hadn’t meant any harm, but this truculent conduct (combined with her dropping that ninepence down a grating in the gutter) made her see red, and she instantly told Irene that Lucia had been flirting with Benjy. Irene had tersely replied, “You foul-minded old widow.”
br /> Then as comment spread, Susan Wyse was blamed for having allowed Benjy (knowing his weakness) to drink so much champagne, and Mr. Wyse was blamed for being so liberal with his port. This was quite unfounded: it was Benjy who had been so liberal with his port. The Wyses adopted a lofty attitude: they simply were not accustomed to their guests drinking too much, and must bear that possibility in mind for the future: Figgis must be told. Society therefore once again, as on the occasion of the municipal elections, was rent. The Wyses were aloof, Elizabeth and Diva would not speak to Lucia, nor Diva to Irene, and Benjy would not speak to anybody because he was in bed with a severe bilious attack.
This haycock of inflammatory material would in the ordinary course of things soon have got dispersed or wet through or trodden into the ground, according to the Tilling use of disposing of past disturbances in order to leave the ground clear for future ones, but for the unexpected arrival of the Contessa Faraglione who came on a flying visit of two nights to her brother. He and Susan were still adopting their tiresome lofty, un-Tillingish attitude, and told her nothing at all exhaustive about Benjy’s inebriation, Lucia’s excavations, Elizabeth’s disappointment and other matters of first-rate importance, and in the present state of tension thought it better not to convoke any assembly of Tilling Society in Amelia’s honour. But she met Elizabeth in the High Street who was very explicit about Roman antiquities, and she met Lucia, who was in a terrible fright lest she should begin talking Italian, and learned a little more, and she went to tea with Diva, who was quite the best chronicler in Tilling, and who poured into her madly interested ear a neat résumé of all previous rows, and had just got down to the present convulsion when the Padre popped in, and he and Diva began expounding it in alternate sentences after the manner of a Greek tragedy. Faradiddlione sat, as if hypnotised, alert and wide-eyed while this was going on, but when told of Elizabeth’s surmise that Lucia had encouraged Benjy to make love to her, she most disconcertingly burst into peals of laughter. Muffins went the wrong way, she choked, she clapped her hands, her eyes streamed, and it was long before she could master herself for coherent speech.
“But you are all adorable,” she cried. “There is no place like Tilling, and I shall come and live here for ever when my Cecco dies and I am dowager. My poor brother (such a prig!) and fat Susan were most discreet: they told me no more than that your great Benjy—he was my flirt here before, was he not, the man like a pink walrus—that he had a bilious attack, but of his tipsiness and of all those gaffes at dinner and of that scene of passion in the back drawing-room not a word. Thr-r-rilling! Imagine the scene. Your tipsy walrus. Your proud Lucia in her Roman blue stockings. She is a Duse, all cold alabaster without and burning with volcanic passion within. Next door is Mapp quarrelling about ninepence. What did the guilty ones do? I would have given anything to have been behind the curtain. Did they kiss? Did they embrace? Can you picture them? And then the entry of Mapp with her ninepence still in her pocket.”
“It’s only fair to say that she paid me next morning,” said Diva scrupulously.
“Oh, stop me laughing,” cried Faradiddlione. “Mapp enters. ‘Come home, Benjy,’ and then ‘Queen of my Heart’ all down the High Street. The rage of the Mapp! If she could not have a baby she must invent for her husband a mistress. Who shall say it is not true, though? When his bilious attack is better will they meet in the garden at Mallards? He is Lothario of the tiger-skins. Why should it not be true? My Cecco has had a mistress for years—such a good-natured pretty woman—and why not your Major? Basta! I must be calm.”
This flippant and deplorably immoral view of the crisis had an inflammatory rather than a cooling effect. If Tilling was anything, it was intensely serious, and not to be taken seriously by this lascivious Countess made it far more serious. So, after a few days during which social intercourse was completely paralysed, Lucia determined to change the currents of thought by digging a new channel for them. She had long been considering which should be the first of those benefactions to Tilling which would raise her on a pinnacle of public pre-eminence and expunge the memory of that slight fiasco at the late municipal elections, and now she decided on the renovation and amplification of the organ on which she and Georgie had been practising this morning. The time was well chosen, for surely those extensive rents in the social fabric would be repaired by the universal homage rendered her for her munificence, and nothing more would be heard of Roman antiquities and dinner-bells and drunkenness and those odious and unfounded aspersions on the really untarnishable chastity of her own character. All would be forgotten.
Accordingly next Sunday morning the Padre had announced from the pulpit in accents trembling with emotion that through the generosity of a donor who preferred to remain anonymous the congregation’s psalms and hymns of praise would soon be accompanied by a noble new relay of trumpets and shawms. Then, as nobody seemed to guess (as Lucia had hoped) who the anonymous donor was, she had easily been persuaded to let this thin veil of anonymity be withdrawn. But even then there was not such a tumultuous outpouring of gratitude and admiration as to sweep away all the hatchets that still lay perilously about: in fact Elizabeth who brought the news to Diva considered the gift a very ostentatious and misleading gesture.
“It’s throwing dust in our eyes,” she observed with singular acidity. “It’s drawing a red herring across her Roman excavations and her abominable forwardness with Benjy on that terrible evening. As for the gift itself, I consider it far from generous. With the fortune she has made in gold-mines and rails and all the rest of it, she doesn’t feel the cost of it one atom. What I call generosity is to deprive yourself—”
“Now you’re not being consistent, Elizabeth,” said Diva. “You told me yourself that you didn’t believe she had made more than half-a-crown.”
“No, I never said that, dear,” affirmed Elizabeth. “You must be thinking of someone else you were gossiping with.”
“No, I mustn’t,” said Diva. “You did say it. And even if you hadn’t, it would be very paltry of you to belittle her gift just because she was rich. But you’re always carping and picking holes, and sowing discord.”
“I?” said Elizabeth, not believing her ears.
“Yes, you. Go back to that terrible evening as you call it. You’ve talked about nothing else since: you’ve been keeping the wound open. I don’t deny that it was very humiliating for you to see Major Benjy exceed like that, and of course no woman would have liked her husband to go bawling out ‘Queen of my Heart’ all the way home about some other woman. But I’ve been thinking it over. I don’t believe Lucia made up to him any more than I did. We should all be settling down again happily if it wasn’t for you, instead of being at loggerheads with each other. Strawberries will be in next week, and not one of us dares ask the rest to our usual summer Bridge parties for fear of there being more ructions.”
“Nonsense, dear,” said Elizabeth. “As far as I am concerned it isn’t a question of not daring at all, though of course I wouldn’t be so rude as to contradict you about your own moral cowardice. It’s simply that I prefer not to see anything of people like Lucia or Susan who on that night was neither more nor less than a barmaid encouraging Benjy to drink, until they’ve expressed regret for their conduct.”
“If it comes to expressions of regret,” retorted Diva. “I think Major Benjy had better show the way and you follow. How you can call yourself a Christian at all is beyond me.”
“Benjy has expressed himself very properly to me,” said Elizabeth, “so there’s the end of that. As for my expressing regret I can’t conceive what you wish me to express regret for. Painful though I should find it to be excommunicated by you, dear, I shall have to bear it. Or would you like me to apologise to Irene for all the wicked things she said to me that night?”
“Well I daren’t ask our usual party,” said Diva, “however brave you are. You may call it moral cowardice, but it’s simply common sense. Lucia would refuse with some excuse that would be an insult to m
y intelligence, and Mr. Georgie would certainly stick to her. So would Irene; besides she called me a foul-minded old widow. The Wyses won’t begin, and I agree it wouldn’t be any use your trying. The only person who’s got the power or position or whatever you like to call it, to bring us all together again is Lucia herself. Don’t look down your nose, Elizabeth, because it’s true. I’ve a good mind to apologise to her for my bit of silly chaff about Major Benjy, and to ask her to do something for us.”
“I hope, dear,” said Elizabeth rising, “that you won’t encourage her to think that Benjy and I will come to her house. That would only lead to disappointment.”
“By the way, how is he?” said Diva. “I forgot to ask.”
“So I noticed, dear. He’s better, thanks. Gone to play golf again to-day.”
Diva put her pride in her pocket and went up to Mallards that very afternoon and said that she was very sorry that a word of hers spoken really in jest, should have given offence to Lucia. Lucia, as might have been expected from her lofty and irritating ways, looked at her smiling and a little puzzled, with her head on one side.
“Dear Diva, what do you mean?” she said. “How can you have offended me?”
“What I said about Benjy and you,” said Diva. “Just outside Twistevant’s. Very stupid of me, but just chaff.”
“My wretched memory,” said Lucia. “I’ve no recollection of it at all. I think you must have dreamed it. But so nice to see you, and tell me all the news. Heaps of pleasant little parties? I’ve been so busy with my new organ and so on, that I’m quite out of the movement.”
“There’s not been a single party since that dinner at Susan’s,” said Diva.
“You don’t say so! And how is Major Benjy? I think somebody told me he had caught a chill that night, when he walked home. People who have lived much in the tropics are liable to them: he must take more care of himself.”