“It hasn’t got there yet,” whispered Elizabeth. “As a Councillor, I shall have something to say to that.”
They crossed over to the other side of the room, passing Lucia and Georgie on the way, as if in some figure of the Lancers. Evie and the Padre were standing close in front of the Venus and Evie burst into a series of shrill squeaks.
“Oh, dear me! Did you ever, Kenneth!” she said. “Poor Elizabeth. What a face and so like!”
“Well indeed!” said Kenneth. “Surely the puir oyster-shell canna’ bear that weight, and down she’ll go and get a ducking. An’ the Major up in the clouds wi’ his wee bottle… Eh, and here’s Mistress Mapp-Flint herself and her guid man. A proud day for ye. Come along wifie.”
Irene had not been at the opening, but now she entered in her shorts and scarlet jersey. Her eye fell on the hydrangea below the Venus.
“Take that foul thing away,” she screamed. “It kills my picture. What, another of them under my Lucia! Throw them into the street, somebody. By whose orders were they put there? Where’s the hanging Committee? I summon the hanging Committee.”
The offending vegetables were borne away by Georgie and the Padre, and Irene, having cooled down, joined Benjy and Elizabeth by the Venus. She looked from it to them and from them to it.
“My God, how I’ve improved since I did that!” she said. “I think I must repaint some of it, and put more character into your faces.”
“Don’t touch it, dear,” said Elizabeth nervously. “It’s perfect as it is. Genius.”
“I know that,” said Irene, “but a few touches would make it more scathing. There’s rouge on your cheeks now, Mapp, and that would give your face a hungry impropriety. I’ll see to that this afternoon when the exhibition closes for the day.”
“But not while it’s on view, quaint one,” argued Elizabeth. “The Committee accepted it as it was. Most irregular.”
“They’ll like it far better when I’ve touched it up,” said Irene. “You’ll see;” and she joined Lucia and Georgie.
“Darling, it’s not unworthy of you, is it?” she asked. “And how noble you are to give it to the Borough for the Town Hall. It must hang just above the Mayor’s chair. That’s the only place for it.”
“There’ll be no difficulty about that,” said Lucia.
She announced her gift to the Town Council at their next meeting, coupled with the artist’s desire that it should be hung on the wall behind the Mayor’s chair. Subdued respectful applause followed her gracious speech and an uncomfortable silence, for most of her Councillors had already viewed the work of Art with feelings of bewildered stupefaction. Then she was formally thanked for her generous intention and the Town-Clerk intimated that before the Borough accepted any gift, a small committee was always appointed to inspect it. Apart from Elizabeth, who said she would be honoured to serve on it, some diffidence was shown; several Councillors explained that they had no knowledge of the pictorial art, but eventually two of them said they would do their best.
This Committee met next morning at the exhibition, and sat in depressed silence in front of the picture. Then Elizabeth sighed wistfully and said “Tut, tut” and the two others looked to her for a lead. She continued to gaze at the picture.
“Me to say something, gentlemen?” she asked, suddenly conscious of their scrutiny. “Well, if you insist. I trust you will disagree with what I feel I’m bound to say, for otherwise I fear a very painful duty lies in front of us. So generous of our beloved Mayor, and so like her, isn’t it? But I don’t see how it is possible for us to recommend the Council to accept her gift. I wouldn’t for the world set up my opinion against yours, but that’s what I feel. Most distressing for me, you will well understand, being so intimate a friend of hers, but private affection cannot rank against public responsibility.” A slight murmur of sympathy followed this speech, and the committee found that they were of one mind in being conscientiously unable to recommend the Council to accept the Mayor’s gift.
“Very sad,” said Elizabeth, shaking her head. “Our proceedings, I take it, are confidential until we communicate them officially to the Council.”
When her colleagues had gone, the Mayoress strolled round the gallery. A misty morning on the marsh really looked very well: its vague pearly opalescence seemed to emphasize the faulty drawing in Georgie’s sunny morning on the marsh and Diva’s tartlets. Detaching herself from it, she went to the Venus, and a horrified exclamation burst from her. Quaint Irene had carried out her awful threat, had tinged her cheeks with unnatural colour, and had outlined her mouth with a thin line of vermilion, giving it a coyly beckoning expression. So gross a parody of her face and indeed of her character could not be permitted to remain there: something must be done, and, leaving the gallery in great agitation, she went straight to Mallards, for no one but Lucia had the smallest influence with that quaint and venomous young person.
The Mayor had snatched a short respite from her incessant work, and was engaged on a picture of some fine hollyhocks in her garden. She was feeling very buoyant, for the Poppy-crisis seemed to be quite over, and she knew that she had guessed correctly the purport of her Mayoress’s desire to see her on urgent business. Invisible to mortal eye, there was a brazier of coals of fire on the lawn beside her, which she would presently pour on to the Mayoress’s head.
“Good morning, dear Elizabeth,” she said. “I’ve just snatched half an hour while good Mrs. Simpson is typing some letters for me. Susan and Mr. Wyse have implored me to do another little flower-study for our esposizione, to fill up the vacant place by my dahlias. I shall call it ‘Jubilant July’. As you know, I am always at your disposal. What good wind blows you here?”
“Lovely of you to spare the time,” said Elizabeth. “I’ve just been to the esposizione, and I felt it was my duty to see you at once. Quaint Irene has done something too monstrous. She’s altered my face; she’s given it a most disgusting expression. The picture can’t be allowed to remain there in its present condition. I wondered if you with your great influence—”
Lucia half-closed her eyes, and regarded her sketch with intolerable complacency.
“Yes: that curious picture of Irene’s,” she said at length. “What a Puck-like genius! I went with her to our gallery a couple of hours ago, to see what she had done to the Venus: she was so eager to know what I thought about her little alterations.”
“An outrage, an abomination!” cried Elizabeth.
“I should not put it quite as strongly as that,” said Lucia, returning to her hollyhocks and putting in a vein on one of the leaves with exquisite delicacy. “But I told her that I could not approve of those new touches. They introduced, to my mind, a note of farce into her satire, which was out of place, though amusing in itself. She agreed with me after a little argument into which I need not go. She will remove them again during the lunch hour.”
“Oh thank you, dear,” said Elizabeth effusively. “I always say what a true friend you are. I was terribly upset.”
“Nothing at all,” said Lucia sucking her paintbrush. “Quite easy.”
Elizabeth turned her undivided attention to the hollyhocks.
“What a lovely sketch!” she said. “How it will enrich our exhibition. Thank you, dear, again. I won’t keep you from your work any longer. How you find time for all you do is a constant amazement to me.”
She ambled swiftly away. It would have been awkward if, at such a genial moment, Lucia had asked whether the artistic committee appointed by the Council had inspected Irene’s other masterpiece yet.
The holiday months of August and September were at hand, when the ladies of Tilling were accustomed to let their houses and move into smaller houses themselves at a cheaper rent than what they received. Diva, for instance, having let her own house, was accustomed to move into Irene’s, who took a remote cottage on the marsh, where she could pursue her art and paint nude studies of herself in a looking-glass. But this year Diva refused to quit ye olde tea-house, when, with the to
wn full of visitors, she would be doing so roaring a business; the Wyses decided not to go to Italy to stay with the Contessa, since international relations were so strained, and Lucia felt it her duty as Mayor, to remain in Tilling. The only letting done, in fact, was by the Padre, who left his curate in charge, while he and Evie took a prolonged holiday in bonnie Scotland, and let the Vicarage to the Mapp-Flints who had a most exciting tenant. This was a Miss Susan Leg, who, so Tilling was thrilled to learn from an interview she gave to a London paper, was none other than the world-wide novelist, Rudolph da Vinci. Miss Leg (so she stated in this piece of self-revelation) never took a holiday. “I shall not rest,” she finely observed, “till the shadows of life’s eventide close round me,” and she went on to explain that she would be studying, in view of a future book, this little centre of provincial English life. “I am well aware,” said Miss Leg, “that my readers expect of me an aristocratic setting for my romances, but I intend to prove to them that life is as full of human interest in any simple, humble country village as in Belgravia and the country-houses of the nobility.”
Lucia read this interview aloud to Georgie. It seemed to suggest possibilities. She veiled these in her usual manner.
“Rudolph da Vinci,” she said musingly. “I have heard her name now I come to think of it. She seems to expect us all to be yokels and bumpkins. I fancy she will have to change her views a little. No doubt she will get some introduction to me, and I shall certainly ask her to tea. If she is as uppish and superior as she appears to be, that would be enough. We don’t want best-sellers to write up our cultured vivid life here. So cheap and vulgarising; not in accordance with our traditions.”
There was nothing, Georgie knew, that would fill Lucia with deeper pride than that traditions should be violated and life vulgarised, and even while she uttered these high sentiments a vision rose in her mind of Rudolph da Vinci writing a best-seller, with the scene laid in Tilling, and with herself, quite undisguised, as head of its social and municipal activities.
“Yet one must not prejudge her,” she went on, as this vision grew brighter. “I must order a book of hers and read it, before I pass judgment on her work. And we may find her a very pleasant sort of woman. Perhaps I had better call on her, Georgie, for I should not like her to think that I slighted her, and then I will ask her to dine with us, très intime, just you and she and I. I should be sorry if her first impressions of Tilling were not worthy of us. Diva, for instance, it would be misleading if she saw Diva with those extraordinary eyebrows, bringing up teas from the kitchen, purple in the face, and thought her representative of our social life. Or if Elizabeth with her rouged cheeks asked her to dine at the Parsonage, and Benjy told his tiger-stories. Yes, I will call on her as soon as she arrives, and get hold of her. I will take her to our Art Exhibition, allow her to sign the Mayor’s book as a distinguished visitor, and make her free of my house without ceremony. We will show her our real, inner life. Perhaps she plays Bridge: I will ascertain that when I call. I might almost meet her at the station, if I can find out when she arrives. Or it might be better if you met her at the station as representing me, and I would call on her at Grebe half an hour afterwards. That would be more regular.”
“Elizabeth told me that she arrives by the three-twenty-five to-day,” said Georgie. “And she has hired a motor and is meeting her.”
It did not require so keen a nose as Lucia’s to scent rivalry, but she gave no hint of that.
“Very proper,” she said. “Elizabeth no doubt will drive her to Grebe, and show her tenant the house.”
Lucia bicycled to Grebe about tea-time, but found that Miss Leg had driven into the town, accompanied by the Mayoress, to have tea. She left her official card, as Mayor of Tilling, and went straight to the Vicarage. But Elizabeth was also out, and Lucia at once divined that she had taken Miss Leg to have tea at Diva’s. She longed to follow and open operations at once, but decided to let the Mayoral card do its work. On her way home she bought a copy of the 25th edition of the novelist’s Kind Hearts and Coronets, and dipped into it. It was very sumptuous. On the first page there was a Marchioness who had promised to open a village bazaar and was just setting off to do so, when a telephone message arrived that a Royal Princess would like to visit her that afternoon. “Tell her Royal Highness,” said that kind-hearted woman, “that I have a long-standing engagement, and cannot disappoint my people. I will hurry back as soon as the function is over…” Lucia pictured herself coming back rather late to entertain Miss Leg at lunch—Georgie would be there to receive her—because it was her day for reading to the inmates of the workhouse. She would return with a copy of Kind Hearts and Coronets in her hand, explaining that the dear old bodies implored her to finish the chapter. The idea of Miss Leg writing a best-seller about Tilling became stupefyingly sweet.
Georgie came in, bringing the evening post.
“A letter from Olga,” he said, “and she’s written to me too, so it’s sure to be the same. She wants us to go to Riseholme tomorrow for two days, as she’s got music. A string quartette coming down.”
Lucia read her letter.
“Yes, most kind of her,” she said. “But how can I get away? Ah, she anticipates that, and says that if I’m too busy she will understand. And it would look so marked if I went away directly after Miss Leg had arrived.”
“That’s for you to judge,” he said. “If you think she matters, I expect you’re right, because Elizabeth’s getting a pretty firm hold. I’ve been introduced to her: Elizabeth brought her in to tea at Diva’s.”
“I imagined that had happened,” said Lucia. “What about her?”
“A funny little round red thing, rather like Diva. Swanky. She’s brought a butler and a footman, she told us, and her new Daimler will get down late to-night. And she asked if any of the nobility had got country seats near Tilling—”
“Did you tell her that I dined and slept—that Duchess Poppy asked me to dine and sleep at the Castle?” interrupted Lucia.
“No,” said Georgie. “I thought of it, but then I judged it was wiser not to bring it up again. She ate a whole lot of buns, and she was very gracious to Diva, (which Diva didn’t like much) and told her she would order her chef—her very words—to send her a recipe for cream wafers. Elizabeth’s toadying her like anything. She said ‘Oh, how kind, Miss Leg. You are lucky, dear Diva.’ And they were going on to see the church afterwards, and Leg’s dining with the Mapp-Flints tomorrow.”
Lucia reviewed this rather sinister intelligence.
“I hate to disappoint dear Olga,” she said, “but I think I had better stop here. What about you?”
“Of course I shall go,” said Georgie.
Georgie had to leave for Riseholme next morning without a maid, for in view of the entertainment that might be going on at Mallards, Lucia could not spare either Foljambe or Grosvenor. She spent a long time at the garden-room window that afternoon, and told her cook to have a good tea ready to be served at a moment’s notice, for Miss Leg would surely return her call to-day. Presently a large car came bouncing up the street: from its size Lucia thought at first that it was Susan’s, but there was a man in livery sitting next the chauffeur, and at once she guessed. The car stopped at Mallards, and from behind her curtain Lucia could see that Elizabeth and another woman were inside. A podgy little hand was thrust out of the window, holding a card, which the man-servant thrust into the letter box. He rang the bell, but before it was answered he mounted again, and the car drove on. A hundred pages of stream-of-consciousness fiction could not have explained the situation more exhaustively to Lucia than her own flash of insight. Elizabeth had evidently told the novelist that it would be quite sufficient to leave a card on the Mayor and have done with her. What followed at the Parsonage that evening when Miss Leg dined with the Mapp-Flints bore out the accuracy of Lucia’s intuition.
“A very plain simple dinner, dear Miss Leg,” said Elizabeth as they sat down. “Just pot luck, as I warned you, so I hope you’ve got
a country appetite.”
“I know I have, Liz,” said Benjy heartily. “A round of golf makes me as hungry as I used to be after a day’s tiger shooting in the jungle.”
“Those are trophies of yours at Grebe, then,” said Miss Leg. “I consider tiger-shooting a manly pursuit. That’s what I mean by sport, taking your life in your hand instead of sitting in an arm chair and firing into flocks of hand-reared pheasants. That kind of ‘sportsman’ doesn’t even load his own gun, I believe. Butchers and poulterers; that’s what I called them in one of my books.”
“Withering! scathing!” cried Elizabeth. “And how well-deserved! Benjy gave such a wonderful lecture here the other day about his hair-breath escapes. You could have heard a pin drop.”
“Ah, that’s an old story now,” said Benjy. “My shikarri days are over. And there’s not a man in Tilling who’s even seen a tiger except through the bars at the Zoo. Georgie Pillson, for instance—”
“Whom I presented to you at tea yesterday, Miss Leg,” put in Elizabeth. “Husband of our dear Mayor. Pointed beard. Sketches quite prettily, and does exquisite needlework. My wicked Benjy once dubbed him Miss Milliner Michael-Angelo.”
“And that was very withering too,” said Miss Leg, eating lumps of expensive middle-cut salmon with a country appetite.
“Well, well, not very kind, I’m afraid, but I like a man to be a man,” said Benjy. “I’ll take a bit more fish, Liz. A nice fresh-run fish. And what are you going to give us next?”
“Just a brace of grouse,” said Elizabeth.
“Ah, yes. A few old friends with Scotch moors haven’t quite forgotten me yet, Miss Leg. Dear old General!”
“Your Miss Milliner has gone away, Benjy,” said Elizabeth. “Staying with Miss Olga Bracely. Probably you know her, Miss Leg. The prima donna. Such a fascinating woman.”
“Alone? Without his wife?” asked Miss Leg. “I do not approve of that. A wife’s duty, Mayor or not, is to be always with her husband and vice versa. If she can’t leave her home, she ought to insist on his stopping with her.”