LUCIA'S PROGRESS
PART 7
CHAPTER VII
For the next few days Lucia was never once seen in the streets of Tilling, for all day she supervised the excavations in her garden. To the great indignation of her gardener, she hired two unemployed labourers at very high wages in view of the importance of their work, and set them to dig a trench across the potato-patch which Elizabeth had despoiled and the corner of the asparagus bed, so that she must again strike the line of the hot-air flue, which had been so providentially discovered at the corner of the garden-room. Great was her triumph when she hit it once more, though it was a pity to find that it still ran through the earth, and not, as she had hoped through the buried remains of a wall. But the soil was rich in relics, it abounded in pieces of pottery on the same type as those she had decided were Roman, and there were many pretty fragments of iridescent, oxydised glass, and a few bones which she hoped might turn out to be those of red deer which at the time of the Roman occupation were common in Kent and Sussex. Her big table in the garden-room was cleared of its books and writing apparatus, and loaded with cardboard trays of glass and pottery. She scarcely entered the Office at all, and but skimmed through the communications from Mammoncash.
Georgie dined with her on the evening of the joyful day when she had come across the hot-air flue again. There was a slightly earthy odour in the garden-room where after dinner they pored over fragments of pottery, and vainly endeavoured to make pieces fit together.
"It's most important, Georgie," she said, "as you will readily understand, to keep note of the levels at which objects are discovered. Those in Tray D come from four feet down in the corner of the asparagus bed: that is the lowest level we have reached at present, and they, of course, are the earliest."
"Oh, and look at Tray A," said Georgie. "All those pieces of clay tobacco pipes. I didn't know the Romans smoked. Did they?"
Lucia gave a slightly superior laugh.
"Caro, of course they didn't," she said. "Tray A: yes, I thought so. Tray A is from a much higher level, let me see, yes, a foot below the surface of the ground. We may put it down therefore as being subsequent to Queen Elizabeth when tobacco was introduced. At a guess I should say those pipes were Cromwellian. A Cromwellian look, I fancy. I am rather inclined to take a complete tile from the continuation of the air flue which I laid bare this morning, and see if it is marked in full S.P.Q.R. The tile from the street, you remember, was broken and had only S.P. on it. Yet is it a Vandalism to meddle at all with such a fine specimen of a flue evidently in situ?"
"I think I should do it," said Georgie, "you can put it back when you've found the letters."
"I will then. To-morrow I expect my trench to get down to floor level. There may be a tesselated pavement like that found at Richborough. I shall have to unearth it all, even if I have to dig up the entire kitchen garden. And if it goes under the garden-room, I shall have to underpin it, I think they call it. Fancy all this having come out of a smell of gas!"
"Yes, that was a bit of luck," said Georgie stifling a yawn over Tray A, where he was vainly trying to make a complete pipe out of the fragments.
Lucia put on the kind, the indulgent smile suitable to occasions when Georgie did not fully appreciate her wisdom or her brilliance.
"Scarcely fair to call it entirely luck," she said, "for you must remember that when the cellar was dug out I told you plainly that I should find Roman remains in the garden. That was before the gas smelt."
"I'd forgotten that," said Georgie. "To be sure you did."
"Thank you, dear. And to-morrow morning, if you are strolling and shopping in the High Street, I think you might let it be known that I am excavating in the garden and that the results, so far, are most promising. Roman remains: you might go as far as that. But I do not want a crowd of sightseers yet: they will only impede the work. I shall admit nobody at present."
Foljambe had very delicately told Georgie that there was a slight defect in the plumbing system at Mallards Cottage, and accordingly he went down to the High Street next day to see about this. It was pleasant to be the bearer of such exciting news about Roman remains, and he announced it to Diva through the window and presently met Elizabeth. She had detached the tiger-skin border from the familiar green skirt.
"Hope the smell of gas or drains or both has quite gone away now, Mr. Georgie," she said. "I'm told it was enough to stifle anybody. Odd that I never had any trouble in my time nor Aunt Caroline in hers. Lucia none the worse?"
"Not a bit. And no smell left," said Georgie.
"So glad! Most dangerous it must have been. Any news?"
"Yes: she's very busy digging up the kitchen garden--"
"What? My beautiful garden?" cried Elizabeth shrilly. "Ah, I forgot. Yes?"
"And she's finding most interesting Roman remains. A villa, she thinks, or more probably a temple."
"Indeed! I must go up and have a peep at them."
"She's not showing them to anybody just yet," said Georgie. "She's deep down in the asparagus bed. Pottery. Glass. Air flues."
"Well, that is news! Quite an archæologist, and nobody ever suspected it," observed Elizabeth smiling her widest. "Padre, dear Lucia has found a Roman temple in my asparagus bed."
"Ye dinna say! I'll rin up, bedad."
"No use," said Elizabeth. "Not to be shown to anybody yet."
Georgie passed on to the plumbers. "Spencer & Son" was the name of the firm, and there was the proud legend in the window that it had been established in Tilling in 1820 and undertook all kinds of work connected with plumbing and drains. Mr. Spencer promised to send a reliable workman up at once to Mallards Cottage.
The news disseminated by Georgie quickly spread from end to end of the High Street, and reached the ears of an enterprising young gentleman who wrote paragraphs of local news for the Hastings Chronicle. This should make a thrilling item, and he called at Mallards just as Lucia was coming in from her morning's digging, and begged to be allowed to communicate any particulars she could give him to the paper. There seemed no harm in telling him what she had allowed Georgie to reveal to Tilling (in fact she liked the idea) and told him briefly that she had good reason to hope that she was on the track of a Roman villa, or, more probably, a temple. It was too late for the news to appear in this week's issue, but it would appear next week, and he would send her a copy. Lucia lunched in a great hurry and returned to the asparagus bed.
Soon after Georgie appeared to help. Lucia was standing in the trench with half of her figure below ground level, like Erda in Wagner's justly famous opera. If only Georgie had not dyed his beard, he might have been Wotan.
"Ben arrivato," she called to him in the Italian translation. "I'm on the point of taking out a tile from my hot-air flue. I am glad you are here as a witness, and it will be interesting for you. This looks rather a loose one. Now."
She pulled it out and turned it over.
"Georgie," she cried. "Here's the whole of the stamped letters of which I had only two."
"Oh, how exciting," said Georgie. "I do hope there's a Q.R. as well as the S.P."
Lucia rubbed the dirt off the inscription and then replaced the tile.
"What is the name of that plumber in the High Street established a century ago?" she asked in a perfectly calm voice.
Georgie guessed what she had found.
"My dear, how tarsome!" he said. "I'm afraid it is Spencer."
Lucia got nimbly out of the trench, and wiped her muddy boots against the box edging of the path.
"Georgie, that is a valuable piece of evidence," she said. "No doubt this is an old drain. I confess I was wrong about it. Let us date it, tentatively, circa 1830. Now we know more about the actual levels. First we have the Cromwellian stratum: tobacco pipes. Below again--what is that?"
There were two workmen in the trench, the one with a pick, the other shovelling the earth into a basket to dump it on to the far corner of the potato-patch uprooted by Elizabeth. Georgie was glad of this diversion (whatever it might be) for it struck him that the stratum which Lucia had assigned to Cromwell was far above the air flue stratum, once pronounced to be Roman, but now dated circa 1830 . . . The digger had paused with his pickaxe poised in the air.
"Lovely bit of glass here, ma'am," he said. "I nearly went crash into it!"
Lucia jumped back into the trench and became Erda again. It was a narrow escape indeed. The man's next blow must almost certainly have shattered a large and iridescent piece of glass, which gleamed in the mould. Tenderly and carefully, taking off her gloves, Lucia loosened it.
"Georgie!" she said in a voice faint and ringing with emotion, "take it from me in both hands with the utmost caution. A wonderful piece of glass, with an inscription stamped on it."
"Not Spencer again, I hope," said Georgie.
Lucia passed it to him from the trench, and he received it in his cupped hands.
"Don't move till I get out and take it from you," said she. "Not another stroke for the present," she called to her workman.
There was a tap for the garden-hose close by. Lucia let the water drip very gently, drop by drop, on to the trove. It was brilliantly iridescent, of a rich greenish colour below the oxydized surface, and of curved shape. Evidently it was a piece of some glass vessel, ewer or bottle. Tilting it this way and that to catch the light she read the letters stamped on it.
"A.P.O.L." she announced.
"It's like crosswords," said Georgie. "All I can think of is 'Apology'."
Lucia sat down on a neighbouring bench, panting with excitement but radiant with triumph.
"Do you remember how I said that I suspected I should find the remains of a Roman temple?" she asked.
"Yes: or a villa," said Georgie.
"I thought a temple more probable, and said so. Look at it, Georgie. Some sacrificial vessel--there's a hint for you--some flask for libations dedicated to a God. What God?"
"Apollo!" cried Georgie. "My dear, how perfectly wonderful! I don't see what else it could be. That makes up for all the Spencers. And it's the lowest level of all, so that's all right anyhow."
Reverently holding this (quite large) piece of the sacrificial vessel in her joined hands, Lucia conveyed it to the garden-room, dried the water off it with blotting-paper, and put it in a tray by itself, since the objects in Tray D, once indubitably Roman, had been found to be Spenserian.
"All important to find the rest of it," she said. "We must search with the utmost care. Let us go back and plan what is to be done. I think I had better lock the door of the garden-room."
The whole system of digging was revised. Instead of the earth at the bottom of the trench being loosened with strong blows of the pick, Lucia, starting at the point where this fragment of a sacrificial vessel was found, herself dug with a trowel, so that no random stroke should crash into the missing pieces: when she was giddy with blood to the head from this stooping position, Georgie took her place. Then there was the possibility that missing pieces might have been already shovelled out of the trench, so the two workmen were set to turn over the mound of earth already excavated with microscopic diligence.
"It would be unpardonable of me," said Lucia, "if I missed finding the remaining portions, for they must be here, Georgie. I'm so giddy: take the trowel."
"Something like a coin, ma'am," sang out one of the workmen on the dump. "Or it may be a button."
Lucia vaulted out of the trench with amazing agility.
"A coin without doubt," she said. "Much weathered, alas, but we may be able to decipher it. Georgie, would you kindly put it--you have the key of the garden-room--in the same tray as the sacrificial vessel?"
For the rest of the afternoon the search was rewarded by no further discovery. Towards sunset a great bank of cloud arose in the west, and all night long, the heavens streamed with torrential rain. The deluge disintegrated the dump, and the soil was swept over the newly-planted lettuces, and on to the newly gravelled garden-path. The water drained down into the trench from the surface of the asparagus bed, and next day work was impossible, for there was a foot of water in it, and still the rain continued. Driven to more mercenary pursuits, Lucia spent a restless morning in the office, considering the latest advice from Mammoncash. He was strongly of opinion that the rise in the Industrial market had gone far enough: he counselled her to take her profits, of which he enclosed a most satisfactory list, and again recommended gilt-edged stock. Prices there had dwindled a good deal since the Industrial boom began, and the next week or two ought to see a rise. Lucia gazed at the picture of Dame Catherine Winterglass for inspiration, and then rang up Mammoncash (trunk-call) and assented. In her enthusiasm for archæological discoveries, all this seemed tedious business: it required a great effort to concentrate on so sordid an aim as money-making, when further pieces of sacrificial vessels (or vessel) from a temple of Apollo must be lurking in the asparagus bed. But the rain continued and at present they were inaccessible below a foot or more of opaque water enriched with the manure she had dug into the surrounding plots.
Several days elapsed before digging could be resumed, and Tilling rang with the most original reports about Lucia's discoveries. She herself was very cautious in her admissions, for before the complete "Spencer" tile was unearthed, she had, on the evidence of the broken "S.P." tile, let it be known that she had found Roman remains, part of a villa or a temple, in the asparagus bed, and now this evidence was not quite so conclusive as it had been. The Apolline sacrificial vessel, it is true, had confirmed her original theory, but she must wait for more finds, walls or tesselated pavement, before it was advisable to admit sightseers to the digging, or make any fresh announcement. Georgie was pledged to secrecy, all the gardener knew was that she had spoiled his asparagus bed, and as for the coin (for coin it was and no button) the most minute scrutiny could not reveal any sort of image or superscription on its corroded surface: it might belong to the age of Melchizedeck or Hadrian or Queen Victoria. So since Tilling could learn nothing from official quarters, it took the obvious course, sanctified by tradition, of inventing discoveries for itself: a statue was hinted at and a Roman altar. All this was most fortunate for Elizabeth, for the prevailing excitement about the ancient population of Tilling following on the gas and sewer affair, had rendered completely obsolete its sense of having been cheated when it was clear that she was not about to add to the modern population, and her appearance in the High Street alert and active as usual ceased to rouse any sort of comment. To make matters square between the late and the present owner of Mallards, it was only right that, just as Lucia had never believed in Elizabeth's baby, so now Elizabeth was entirely incredulous about Lucia's temple.
Elizabeth, on one of these days of April tempest when digging was suspended, came up from Grebe for her morning's marketing in her raincloak and Russian boots. The approach of a violent shower had driven her to take shelter in Diva's house, who could scarcely refuse her admittance, but did not want her at all. She put down her market-basket, which for the best of reasons smelt of fish, where Paddy could not get at it.
"Such a struggle to walk up from Grebe in this gale," she said. "Diva, you could hardly believe the monstrous state of neglect into which the kitchen garden there has fallen. Not a vegetable. A sad change for me after my lovely garden at Mallards where I never had to buy even a bit of parsley. But beggars can't be choosers, and far be it from me to complain."
"Well, you took every potato out of the ground at Mallards before you left," said Diva. "That will make a nice start for you."
"I said I didn't complain, dear," said Elizabeth sharply. "And how is the Roman Forum getting on? Any new temples? Too killing! I don't believe a single word about it. Probably poor Lucia has discovered the rubbish-heap of odds and ends I threw away when I left my beloved old home for ever."
"Did you bury them in the ground where the potatoes had been?" asked Diva, intensely irritated at this harping on the old home.
Elizabeth, as was only dignified, disregarded this harping on potatoes.
"I'm thinking of digging up two or three old apple-trees at Grebe which can't have borne fruit for the last hundred years," she said, "and telling everybody that I've found the Ark of the Covenant or some Shakespeare Folios among their roots. Nobody shall see them, of course. Lucia finds it difficult to grow old gracefully: that's why she surrounds herself with mysteries, as I said to Benjy the other day. At that age nobody takes any further interest in her for herself, and so she invents Roman Forums to kindle it again. Must be in the limelight. And the fortune she's supposed to have made, the office, the trunk-calls to London. More mystery. I doubt if she's made or lost more than half-a-crown."
"Now that's jealousy," said Diva. "Just because you lost a lot of money yourself, and can't bear that she should have made any. You might just as well say that I didn't make any."
"Diva, I ask you. Did you make any?" said Elizabeth, suddenly giving tongue to a suspicion that had long been a terrible weight on her mind.
"Yes. I did," said Diva with great distinctness, turning a rich crimson as she spoke. "And if you want to know how much, I tell you it's none of your business."
"Chérie--I mean Diva," said Elizabeth very earnestly, "I warn you for your good, you're becoming a leetle mysterious, too. Don't let it grow on you. Let us be open and frank with each other always. No one would be more delighted than me if Lucia turns out to have found the Parthenon in the gooseberry bushes, but why doesn't she let us see anything? It is these hints and mysteries which I deprecate. And the way she talks about finance, as if she was a millionaire. Pending further evidence, I say 'Bunkum' all round."
The superb impudence of Elizabeth of all women giving warnings against being mysterious and kindling waning interest by hinting at groundless pretensions, so dumbfounded Diva that she sat with open mouth staring at her. She did not trust herself to speak for fear she might say, not more than she meant but less. It was better to say nothing than not be adequate and she changed the subject.
"How's the tiger-skirt?" she asked. "And collar."
Elizabeth rather mistakenly thought that she had quelled Diva over this question of middle-aged mysteriousness. She did not want to rub it in, and adopted the new subject with great amiability.
"Sweet of you to ask, dear, about my new little frock," she said. "Everybody complimented me on it, except you, and I was a little hurt. But I think--so does Benjy--that it's a wee bit smart for our homely Tilling. How I hate anybody making themselves conspicuous."
Diva could trust herself to speak on this subject without fear of saying too little.
"Now Elizabeth," she said, "you asked me as a friend to be open and frank with you, and so I tell you that that's not true. The hair was coming off your new little frock--it was the old green skirt anyway--in handfuls. That day you lunched with Lucia and hit your foot against the table-rail it flew about. Grosvenor had to sweep the carpet afterwards. I might as well trim my skirt with strips of my doormat and then say it was too smart for Tilling. You'd have done far better to have buried that mangy tiger-skin and the eye I knocked out of it with the rest of your accumulations in the potato-patch. I should be afraid of getting eczema if I wore a thing like that, and I don't suppose that at this minute there's a single hair left on it. There!"
It was Elizabeth's turn to be dumbfounded at the vehemence of these remarks. She breathed through her nose and screwed her face up into amazing contortions.
"I never thought to have heard such words from you," she said.
"And I never thought to be told that strips from a mangy tiger-skin were too smart to wear in Tilling," retorted Diva. "And pray, Elizabeth, don't make a face as if you were going to cry. Do you good to hear the truth. You think everybody else is being mysterious and getting into deceitful ways just because you're doing so yourself. All these weeks you've been given honey and driven in Susan's Royce and nobody's contradicted you because--oh, well, you know what I mean, so leave it at that."
Elizabeth whisked up her market-basket and the door banged. Diva opened the window to get rid of that horrid smell of haddock.
"I'm not a bit sorry," she said to herself. "I hope it may do her good. It's done me good, anyhow."
The weather cleared, and visiting the flooded trench one evening Lucia saw that the water had soaked away and that digging could be resumed. Accordingly she sent word to her two workmen to start their soil-shifting again at ten next morning. But when, awaking at seven, she found the sun pouring into her room from a cloudless sky, she could not resist going out to begin operations alone. It was a sparkling day, thrushes were scudding about the lawn listening with cocked heads for the underground stir of worms and then rapturously excavating for their breakfast: excavation, indeed, seemed like some beautiful law of Nature which all must obey. Moreover she wanted to get on with her discoveries as quickly as possible, for to be quite frank with herself, the unfortunate business of the Spencer tile had completely exploded, sky-high, all her evidence, and in view of what she had already told the reporter from the Hastings Chronicle, it would give a feeling of security to get some more. To-day was Friday, the Hastings Chronicle came out on Saturday, and, with the earth soft for digging, with the example of the thrushes on the lawn and the intoxicating tonic of the April day, she had a strong presentiment that she would find the rest of that sacred bottle with the complete dedication to Apollo in time to ring up the Hastings Chronicle with this splendid intelligence before it went to press.
Trowel in hand Lucia jumped lightly into the trench. Digging with a trowel was slow work, but much safer than with pick and shovel, for she could instantly stop when it encountered any hard underground resistance which might prove to be a fragment of what she sought. Sometimes it was a pebble that arrested her stroke, sometimes a piece of pottery, and once her agonised heart leapt into her mouth when the blade of her instrument encountered and crashed into some brittle substance. But it was only a snail-shell: it proved to be a big brown one and she remembered a correspondence in the paper about the edible snails which the Romans introduced into Britain, so she put it carefully aside. The clock struck nine and Grosvenor stepping cautiously on the mud which the rain had swept on to the gravel-path came out to know when she would want breakfast. Lucia didn't know herself, but would ring when she was ready.
Grosvenor had scarcely gone back again to the house, when once more Lucia's trowel touched something which she sensed to be brittle, and she stopped her stroke before any crash followed, and dug round the obstruction with extreme caution. She scraped the mould from above it, and with a catch in her breath disclosed a beautiful piece of glass, iridescent on the surface, and of a rich green in substance. She clambered out of the trench and took it to the garden tap. Under the drip of the water there appeared stamped letters of the same type as the APOL on the original fragment: the first four were LINA, and there were several more, still caked with a harder incrustation, to follow. She hurried to the garden-room, and laid the two pieces together. They fitted exquisitely, and the "Apol" on the first ran straight on into the "Lina" of the second.
"Apollina," murmured Lucia. In spite of her Latin studies and her hunts through pages of Roman inscriptions, the name "Apollina" (perhaps a feminine derivative from Apollo) was unfamiliar to her. Yet it held the suggestion of some name which she could not at once recall. Apollina . . . a glass vessel. Then a hideous surmise loomed up in her mind, and with brutal roughness regardless of the lovely iridescent surface of the glass, she rubbed the caked earth off the three remaining letters, and the complete legend "Apollinaris" was revealed.
She sat heavily down and looked the catastrophe in the face. Then she took a telegraph form, and after a brief concentration addressed it to the editor of the Hastings Chronicle, and wrote: "Am obliged to abandon my Roman excavations for the time. Stop. Please cancel my interview with your correspondent as any announcement would be premature. Emmeline Lucas, Mallards House, Tilling."
She went into the house and rang for Grosvenor.
"I want this sent at once," she said.
Grosvenor looked with great disfavour at Lucia's shoes. They were caked with mud which dropped off in lumps on to the carpet.
"Yes, ma'am," she said. "And hadn't you better take off your shoes on the door mat? If you have breakfast in them you'll make an awful mess on your dining-room carpet. I'll bring you some indoor shoes and then you can put the others on again if you're going on digging after breakfast."
"I shan't be digging again," said Lucia.
"Glad to hear it, ma'am."
Lucia breakfasted, deep in meditation. Her excavations were at an end, and her one desire was that Tilling should forget them as soon as possible, even as, in the excitement over them, it had forgotten about Elizabeth's false pretences. Oblivion must cover the memory of them, and obliterate their traces. Not even Georgie should know of the frightful tragedy that had occurred until all vestiges of it had been disposed of; but he was coming across at ten to help her, and he must be put off, with every appearance of cheerfulness so that he should suspect nothing. She rang him up, and her voice was as brisk and sprightly as ever.
"Dood morning, Georgino," she said. "No excavazione to-day."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Georgie. "I was looking forward to finding more glass vessel."
"Me sorry, too," said Lucia. "Dwefful busy to-day, Georgie. We dine to-morrow, don't we, alla casa dei sapienti."
"Where?" asked Georgie, completely puzzled.
"At the Wyses," said Lucia.
She went out to the garden-room. Bitter work was before her but she did not flinch. She carried out, one after the other, trays A, B, C and D, to the scene of her digging, and cast their contents into the trench. The two pieces of glass that together formed a nearly complete Apollinaris bottle gleamed in the air as they fell, and the undecipherable coin clinked as it struck them. Back she went to the garden-room and returned to the London Library every volume that had any bearing on the Roman occupation of Britain. At ten o'clock her two workmen appeared and they were employed for the rest of the day in shovelling back into the trench every spadeful of earth which they had dug out of it. Their instructions were to stamp it well down.
Lucia had been too late to stop her brief communication to the reporter of the Hastings Chronicle from going to press, and next morning when she came down to breakfast she found a marked copy of it ("see page 2" in blue pencil). She turned to it and with a curdling of her blood read what this bright young man had made out of the few words she had given him.
"All lovers of art and archæology will be thrilled to hear of the discoveries that Mrs. Lucas has made in the beautiful grounds of her Queen Anne mansion at Tilling. The châtelaine of Mallards House most graciously received me there a few days ago, and in her exquisite salon which overlooks the quaint old-world street gave me, over 'the cup that cheers but not inebriates,' a brilliant little résumé of her operations up to date and of her hopes for the future. Mrs. Lucas, as I need not remind my readers, is the acknowledged leader of the most exclusive social circles in Tilling, a first-rate pianist, and an accomplished scholar in languages, dead and alive.
"'I have long,' she said, 'been studying that most interesting and profoundly significant epoch in history, namely the Roman occupation of Britain, and it has long been my day-dream to be privileged to add to our knowledge of it. That day-dream, I may venture to say, bids fair to become a waking reality.'
"'What made you first think that there might be Roman remains hidden in the soil of Tilling?' I asked.
"She shook a playful but warning finger at me. (Mrs. Lucas's hands are such as a sculptor dreams of but seldom sees.)
"'Now I'm not going to let you into my whole secret yet,' she said. 'All I can tell you is that when, a little while ago, the street outside my house was dug up to locate some naughty leaking gas pipe, I, watching the digging closely, saw something unearthed that to me was indisputable evidence that under my jardin lay the remains of a Roman villa or temple. I had suspected it before: I had often said to myself that this hill of Tilling, commanding so wide a stretch of country, was exactly the place which those wonderful old Romans would have chosen for building one of their castra or forts. My intuition has already been justified, and, I feel sure will soon be rewarded by even richer discoveries. More I cannot at present tell you, for I am determined not to be premature. Wait a little while yet, and I think, yes, I think you will be astonished at the results . . .'"
Grosvenor came in.
"Trunk-call from London, ma'am," she said. "Central News Agency."
Lucia, sick with apprehension, tottered to the office.
"Mrs. Lucas?" asked a buzzing voice.
"Yes."
"Central News Agency. We've just heard by 'phone from Hastings of your discovery of Roman remains at Tilling," it said. "We're sending down a special representative this morning to inspect your excavations and write--"
"Not the slightest use," interrupted Lucia. "My excavations have not yet reached the stage when I can permit any account of them to appear in the press."
"But the London Sunday papers are most anxious to secure some material about them to-morrow, and Professor Arbuthnot of the British Museum, whom we have just rung up is willing to supply them. He will motor down and be at Tilling--"
Lucia turned cold with horror.
"I am very sorry," she said firmly, "but it is quite impossible for me to let Professor Arbuthnot inspect my excavations at this stage, or to permit any further announcement concerning them."
She rang off, she waited a moment, and, being totally unable to bear the strain of the situation alone, rang up Georgie. There was no Italian or baby-talk to-day.
"Georgie, I must see you at once," she said.
"My dear, anything wrong about the excavations?" asked the intuitive Georgie.
"Yes, something frightful. I'll be with you in one minute."
"I've only just begun my break--" said Georgie and heard the receiver replaced.
With the nightmare notion in her mind of some sleuth-hound of an archæologist calling while she was out and finding no excavation at all, Lucia laid it on Grosvenor to admit nobody to the house under any pretext, and hatless, with the Hastings Chronicle in her hand, she scudded up the road to Mallards Cottage. As she crossed the street she heard from the direction of Irene's house a prolonged and clamorous ringing of a dinner-bell, but there was no time now even to conjecture what that meant.
Georgie was breakfasting in his blue dressing-gown. He had been touching up his hair and beard with the contents of the bottle that always stood in a locked cupboard in his bedroom. His hair was not dry yet, and it was most inconvenient that she should want to see him so immediately. But the anxiety in her telephone-voice was unmistakable, and very likely she would not notice his hair.
"All quite awful, Georgie," she said, noticing nothing at all. "Now first I must tell you that I found the rest of the Apollo-vessel yesterday, and it was an Apollinaris bottle."
"My dear, how tarsome," said Georgie sympathetically.
"Tragic rather than tiresome," said Lucia. "First the Spencer-tile and then the Apollinaris bottle. Nothing Roman left, and I filled up the trench yesterday. Finito! O Georgie, how I should have loved a Roman temple in my garden! Think of the prestige! Archæologists and garden parties with little lectures! It is cruel. And then as if the extinction of all I hoped for wasn't enough there came the most frightful complications. Listen to the Hastings Chronicle of this morning."
She read the monstrous fabrication through in a tragic monotone.
"Such fibs, such inventions!" she cried. "I never knew what a vile trade journalism was! I did see a young man last week--I can't even remember his name or what he looked like--for two minutes, not more, and told him just what I said you might tell Tilling. It wasn't in the garden-room and I didn't give him tea, because it was just before lunch, standing in the hall, and I never shook a playful forefinger at him or talked about day-dreams or naughty gas pipes, and I never called the garden jardin, though I may have said giardino. And I had hardly finished reading this tissue of lies just now, when the Central News rang me up and wanted to send down Professor Arbuthnot of the British Museum to see my excavations. Georgie, how I should have loved it if there had been anything to show him! I stopped that--the Sunday London papers wanted news too--but what am I to do about this revolting Chronicle?"
Georgie glanced through the paper again.
"I don't think I should bother much," he said. "The châtelaine of Mallards, you know, leader of exclusive circles, lovely hands, pianist and scholar: all very complimentary. What a rage Elizabeth will be in. She'll burst."
"Very possibly," said Lucia. "But don't you see how this drags me down to her level? That's so awful. We've all been despising her for deceiving us and trying to make us think she was to have a baby, and now here am I no better than her, trying to make you all think I had discovered a Roman temple. And I did believe it much more than she ever believed the other. I did indeed, Georgie, and now it's all in print which makes it ever so much worse. Her baby was never in print."
Georgie had absently passed his fingers through his beard, to assist thought, and perceived a vivid walnut stain on them. He put his hand below the tablecloth.
"I never thought of that," he said. "It is rather a pity. But think how very soon we forgot about Elizabeth. Why it was almost the next day after she gave up going to be a mother and took in the old green skirt again that you got on to your discoveries, and nobody gave a single thought to her baby any more. Can't we give them all something new to jabber about?"
Georgie had got up from the table and with his walnut hand still concealed strayed to the open window and looked out.
"If that isn't Elizabeth at the door of Mallards!" he said. "She's got a paper in her hand: Hastings Chronicle, I bet. Grosvenor's opened the door, but not very wide. Elizabeth's arguing--"
"Georgie, she mustn't get in," cried the agonized Lucia. "She'll pop out into the garden, and see there's no excavation at all."
"She's still arguing," said Georgie in the manner of Brangaene warning Isolde. "She's on the top step now . . . Oh, it's all right. Grosvenor's shut the door in her face. I could hear it, too. She's standing on the top step, thinking. Oh, my God, she's coming here, just as she did before, when she was canvassing. But there'll be time to tell Foljambe not to let her in."
Georgie hurried away on this errand, and Lucia flattened herself against the wall so that she could not be seen from the street. Presently the door-bell tinkled, and Foljambe's voice was heard firmly reiterating, "No, ma'am, he's not at home . . . No ma'am, he's not in . . . No, ma'am, he's out, and I can't say when he'll be in. Out."
The door closed, and next moment Elizabeth's fell face appeared at the open window. A suspiciously-minded person might have thought that she wanted to peep into Georgie's sitting-room to verify (or disprove) Foljambe's assertions, and Elizabeth, who could read suspicious minds like an open book, made haste to dispel so odious a supposition. She gave a slight scream at seeing him so close to her and in such an elegant costume.
"Dear Mr. Georgie," she said. "I beg your pardon, but your good Foljambe was so certain you were out, and I, seeing the window was open, I--I just meant to pop this copy of the Hastings Chronicle in. I knew how much you'd like to see it. Lovely things about sweet Lucia, châtelaine of Mallards and Queen of Tilling and such a wonderful archæologist. Full of surprises for us. How little one knows on the spot!"
Georgie, returning from warning Foljambe, had left the door ajar, and in consequence Lucia, flattening herself like a shadow against the wall between it and the window, was in a strong draught. The swift and tingling approach of a sneeze darted through her nose and it crashed forth.
"Thanks very much," said Georgie in a loud voice to Elizabeth, hoping in a confused manner by talking loud to drown what had already resounded through the room. Instantly Elizabeth thrust her head a little further through the window and got a satisfactory glimpse of Lucia's skirt. That was enough: Lucia was there and she withdrew her head from its strained position.
"We're all agog about her discoveries," she said. "Such an excitement! You've seen them, of course."
"Rather!" said Georgie with enthusiasm. "Beautiful Roman tiles and glass and pottery. Exquisite!"
Elizabeth's face fell: she had hoped otherwise.
"Must be trotting along," she said. "We meet at dinner, don't we, at Susan Wyse's. Her Majesty is coming, I believe."
"Oh, I didn't know she was in Tilling," said Georgie. "Is she staying with you?"
"Naughty! I only meant the Queen of Tilling."
"Oh, I see," said Georgie. "Au reservoir."
Lucia came out of her very unsuccessful lair.
"Do you think she saw me, Georgie?" she asked. "It might have been Foljambe as far as the sneeze went."
"Certainly she saw you. Not a doubt of it," said Georgie rather pleased at this compromising rôle which had been provided for him. "And now Elizabeth will tell everybody that you and I were breakfasting in my dressing-gown--you see what I mean--and that you hid when she looked in. I don't know what she mightn't make of that."
Lucia considered this a moment, weighing her moral against her archæological reputation.
"It's all for the best," she said decidedly. "It will divert her horrid mind from the excavations. And did you ever hear such acidity in a human voice as when she said 'Queen of Tilling'? A dozen lemons, well squeezed, were saccharine compared to it. But, my dear, it was most clever and most loyal of you to say you had seen my exquisite Roman tiles and glass. I appreciate that immensely."
"I thought it was pretty good," said he. "She didn't like that."
"Caro, it was admirable, and you'll stick to it, won't you? Now the first thing I shall do is to go to the newsagents and buy up all their copies of the Hastings Chronicle. It may be useful to cut off her supplies . . . Oh, Georgie, your hand. Have you hurt it? Iodine?"
"Just a little sprain," said Georgie. "Nothing to bother about."
Lucia picked up her hat at Mallards, and hurried down to the High Street. It was rather a shock to see a news-board outside the paper-shop with
"MRS. LUCAS'S ROMAN FINDS IN TILLING"
prominent in the contents of the current number of the Hastings Chronicle, and a stronger shock to find that all the copies had been sold.
"Went like hot cakes, ma'am," said the proprietor, "on the news of your excavations, and I've just telephoned a repeat order."
"Most gratifying," said Lucia, looking the reverse of gratified. . . . There was Diva haggling at the butcher's as she passed, and Diva ran out, leaving Pat to guard her basket.
"Morning," she said. "Seen Elizabeth?"
Lucia thought of replying "No, but she's seen me," but that would entail lengthy explanations, and it was better first to hear what Diva had to say, for evidently there was news.
"No, dear," she said. "I've only just come down from Mallards. Why?"
Diva whistled to Pat, who, guarding her basket, was growling ferociously at anyone who came near it.
"Mad with rage," she said. "Hastings Chronicle. Seen it?"
Lucia concentrated for a moment, in an effort of recollection.
"Ah, that little paragraph about my excavations," said she lightly. "I did glance at it. Rather exaggerated, rather decorated, but you know what journalists are."
"Not an idea," said Diva, "but I know what Elizabeth is. She told me she was going to expose you. Said she was convinced you'd not found anything at all. Challenging you. Of course what really riled her was that bit about you being leader of social circles, etcetera. From me she went on to tell Irene, and then to call on you and ask you point-blank whether your digging wasn't all a fake, and then she was going on to Georgie. . . . Oh, there's Irene."
Diva called shrilly to her, and she pounded up to them on her bicycle on which was hung a paint-box, a stool and an immense canvas.
"Beloved!" she said to Lucia. "Mapp's been to see me. She told me she was quite sure you hadn't found any Roman remains. So I told her she was a liar. Just like that. She went gabbling on, so I rang my dinner-bell close to her face until she could not bear it any more and fled. Nobody can bear a dinner-bell for long if it's rung like that: all nerve specialists will tell you so. We had almost a row, in fact."
"Darling, you're a true friend," cried Lucia, much moved.
"Of course I am. What else do you expect me to be? I shall bring my bell to the Wyses' this evening, in case she begins again. Good-bye, adored. I'm going out to a farm on the marsh to paint a cow with its calf. If Mapp annoys you any more I shall give the cow her face, though it's bad luck on the cow, and send it to our summer exhibition. It will pleasantly remind her of what never happened to her."
Diva looked after her approvingly as she snorted up the High Street.
"That's the right way to handle Elizabeth, when all's said and done," she remarked. "Quaint Irene understands her better than anybody. Think how kind we all were to her, especially you, when she was exposed. You just said 'Wind-egg.' Never mentioned it again. Most ungrateful of Elizabeth, I think. What are you going to do about it? Why not show her a few of your finds, just to prove what a liar she is?"
Lucia thought desperately a moment, and then a warm, pitying smile dawned on her face.
"My dear, it's really beneath me," she said, "to take any notice of what she told you and Irene and no doubt others as well. I'm only sorry for that unhappy jealous nature of hers. Incurable, I'm afraid: chronic, and I'm sure she suffers dreadfully from it in her better moments. As for my little excavations, I'm abandoning them for a time."
"That's a pity!" said Diva. "Should have thought it was just the time to go on with them. Why?"
"Too much publicity," said Lucia earnestly. "You know how I hate that. They were only meant to be a modest little amateur effort, but what with all that réclame in the Hastings Chronicle, and the Central News this morning telling me that Professor Arbuthnot of the British Museum, who, I understand is the final authority on Roman archæology, longing to come down to see them--"
"No! from the British Museum?" cried Diva. "I shall tell Elizabeth that. When is he coming?"
"I've refused. Too much fuss. And then my arousing all this jealousy and ill-feeling in--well, in another quarter, is quite intolerable to me. Perhaps I shall continue my work later on, but very quietly. Georgie, by the way, has seen my little finds, such as they are, and thinks them exquisite. But I stifle in this atmosphere of envy and malice. Poor Elizabeth! Good-bye, dear, we meet this evening at the Wyses', do we not?"
Lucia walked pensively back to Mallards, not displeased with herself. Irene's dinner-bell and her own lofty attitude would probably scotch Elizabeth for the present, and with Georgie as a deep-dyed accomplice and Diva as an ardent sympathiser, there was not much to fear from her. The Hastings Chronicle next week would no doubt announce that she had abandoned her excavations for the present, and Elizabeth might make exactly what she chose out of that. Breezy unconsciousness of any low libels and machinations was decidedly the right ticket.
Lucia quickened her pace. There had flashed into her mind the memory of a basket of odds and ends which she had brought from Grebe, but which she had not yet unpacked. There was a box of Venetian beads among them, a small ebony elephant, a silver photograph frame or two, some polished agates, and surely she seemed to recollect some pieces of pottery. She had no very distinct remembrance of them, but when she got home she unearthed (more excavation) this basket of dubious treasures from a cupboard below the stairs, and found in her repository of objects suitable for a jumble sale, a broken bowl and a saucer (patera) of red stamped pottery. Her intensive study of Roman remains in Britain easily enabled her to recognise them as being of "Samian ware," not uncommonly found on sites of Roman settlements in this island. Thoughtfully she dusted them, and carried them out to the garden-room. They were pretty, they looked attractive casually but prominently disposed on the top of the piano. Georgie must be reminded how much he had admired them when they were found . . .
To be continued
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