TROUBLE FOR LUCIA
PART 4
CHAPTER IV
Lucia did not find her new duties quite as onerous as she expected, but she made them as onerous as she could. She pored over plans for new houses which the Corporation was building, and having once grasped the difference between section and elevation was full of ideas for tasteful weathercocks, lightning conductors and balconies. With her previous experience in Stock Exchange transactions to help her, she went deeply into questions of finance and hit on a scheme of borrowing money at three and a half per cent. for a heavy outlay for the renewal of drains, and investing it in some thoroughly sound concern that brought in four and a half per cent. She explained this masterpiece to Georgie.
"Say we borrow ten thousand pounds at three and a half," she said, "the interest on that will be three hundred and fifty pounds a year. We invest it, Georgie,--follow me closely here--at four and a half, and it brings us in four hundred and fifty pounds a year. A clear gain of one hundred pounds."
"That does seem brilliant," said Georgie. "But wait a moment. If you re-invest what you borrow, how do you pay for the work on your drains?"
Lucia's face grew corrugated with thought.
"I see what you're driving at, Georgie," she said slowly. "Very acute of you. I must consider that further before I bring my scheme before the Finance Committee. But in my belief--of course this is strictly private--the work on the drains is not so very urgent. We might put it off for six months, and in the meantime reap our larger dividends. I'm sure there's something to be done on those lines."
Then with a view to investigating the lighting of the streets, she took Georgie out for walks after dinner on dark and even rainy evenings.
"This corner now," she said as the rain poured down on her umbrella. "A most insufficient illumination. I should never forgive myself if some elderly person tripped up here in the dark and stunned himself. He might remain undiscovered for hours."
"Quite," said Georgie, "But this is very cold-catching. Let's get home. No elderly person will come out on such a night. Madness."
"It is a little wet," said Lucia, who never caught cold. "I'll go to look at that alley by Bumpus's buildings another night, for there's a memorandum on Town Development plans waiting for me, which I haven't mastered. Something about residential zones and industrial zones, Georgie. I mustn't permit a manufactory to be opened in a residential zone: for instance, I could never set up a brewery or a blacksmith's forge in the garden at Mallards--"
"Well, you don't want to, do you?" said Georgie.
"The principle, dear, is the interesting thing. At first sight it looks rather like a curtailment of the liberty of the individual, but if you look, as I am learning to do, below the surface, you will perceive that a blacksmith's forge in the middle of the lawn would detract from the tranquillity of adjoining residences. It would injure their amenities."
Georgie plodded beside her, wishing Lucia was not so excruciatingly didactic, but trying between sneezes to be a good husband to the Mayor.
"And mayn't you reside in an industrial zone?" he asked.
"That I must look into. I should myself certainly permit a shoe-maker to live above his shop. Then there's the general business zone. I trust that Diva's tea-rooms in the High Street are in order: it would be sad for her if I had to tell her to close them . . . Ah, our comfortable garden-room again! You were asking just now about residence in an industrial zone. I think I have some papers here which will tell you that. And there's a coloured map of zones somewhere, green for industrial, blue for residential and yellow for general business, which would fascinate you. Where is it now?"
"Don't bother about it to-night," said Georgie. "I can easily wait till to-morrow. What about some music? There's that Scarlatti duet."
"Ah, divino Scarlattino!" said Lucia absently, as she turned over her papers. "Eureka! Here it is! No, that's about slums, but also very interesting . . . What's a 'messuage'?"
"Probably a misprint for message," said he. "Or massage."
"No, neither makes sense: I must put a query to that."
Georgie sat down at the piano, and played a few fragments of remembered tunes. Lucia continued reading: it was rather difficult to understand, and the noise distracted her.
"Delicious tunes," she said, "but would it be very selfish of me, dear, to ask you to stop while I'm tackling this? So important that I should have it at my fingers' ends before the next meeting, and be able to explain it. Ah, I see . . . no, that's green. Industrial. But in half an hour or so--"
Georgie closed the piano.
"I think I shall go to bed," he said. "I may have caught cold."
"Ah, now I see," cried Lucia triumphantly. "You can reside in any zone. That is only fair: why should a chemist in the High Street be forced to live half a mile away? And very clearly put. I could not have expressed it better myself. Good-night, dear. A few drops of camphor on a lump of sugar. Sleep well."
The Mayoress was as zealous as the Mayor. She rang Lucia up at breakfast time every morning, and wished to speak to her personally.
"Anything I can do for you, dear Worship?" she asked. "Always at your service, as I needn't remind you."
"Nothing whatever, thanks," answered Lucia. "I've a Council meeting this afternoon--"
"No points you'd like to talk over with me? Sure?"
"Quite," said Lucia firmly.
"There are one or two bits of things I should like to bring to your notice," said the baffled Elizabeth, "for of course you can't keep in touch with everything. I'll pop in at one for a few minutes and chance finding you disengaged. And a bit of news."
Lucia went back to her congealed bacon.
"She's got quite a wrong notion of the duties of a Mayoress, Georgie," she said. "I wish she would understand that if I want her help I shall ask for it. She has nothing to do with my official duties, and as she's not on the Town Council, she can't dip her oar very deep."
"She's hoping to run you," said Georgie. "She hopes to have her finger in every pie. She will if she can."
"I have got to be very tactful," said Lucia thoughtfully. "You see the only object of my making her Mayoress was to dope her malignant propensities, and if I deal with her too rigorously I should merely stimulate them . . . Ah, we must begin our régime of plain living. Let us go and do our marketing at once, and then I can study the agenda for this afternoon before Elizabeth arrives."
Elizabeth had some assorted jobs for Worship to attend to. Worship ought to know that a car had come roaring down the hill into Tilling yesterday at so terrific a pace that she hadn't time to see the number. A van and Susan's Royce had caused a complete stoppage of traffic in the High Street; anyone with only a few minutes to spare to catch a train must have missed it. "And far worse was a dog that howled all last night outside the house next Grebe," said Elizabeth. "Couldn't sleep a wink."
"But I can't stop it," said Lucia.
"No? I should have thought some threatening notice might be served on the owner. Or shall I write a letter to the Argus, which we both might sign. More weight. Or I would write a personal note to you which you might read to the Council. Whichever you like, Worship. You to choose."
Lucia did not find any of these alternatives attractive, but made a business-like note of them all.
"Most valuable suggestions," she said. "But I don't feel that I could move officially about the dog. It might be a cat next, or a canary."
Elizabeth was gazing out of the window with that kind, meditative smile which so often betokened some atrocious train of thought.
"Just little efforts of mine, dear Worship, to enlarge your sphere of influence," she said. "Soon, perhaps, I may be able to support you more directly."
Lucia felt a qualm of sickening apprehension.
"That would be lovely," she said. "But how, dear Elizabeth, could you do more than you are doing?"
Elizabeth focused her kind smile on dear Worship's face. A close up.
"Guess, dear!" she said.
"Couldn't," said Lucia.
"Well, then, there's a vacancy in the Borough Council, and I'm standing for it. Oh, if I got in! At hand to support you in all your Council meetings. You and me! Just think!"
Lucia made one desperate attempt to avert this appalling prospect, and began to gabble.
"That would be wonderful," she said, "and how well I know that it's your devotion to me that prompts you. How I value that! But somehow it seems to me that your influence, your tremendous influence, would be lessened rather than the reverse, if you became just one out of my twelve Councillors. Your unique position as Mayoress would suffer. Tilling would think of you as one of a body. You, my right hand, would lose your independence. And then, unlikely, even impossible as it sounds, supposing you were not elected? A ruinous loss of prestige--"
Foljambe entered.
"Lunch," she said, and left the door of the garden-room wide open.
Elizabeth sprang up with a shrill cry of astonishment.
"No idea it was lunch-time," she cried. "How naughty of me not to have kept my eye on the clock, but time passed so quickly, as it always does, dear, when I'm talking to you. But you haven't convinced me; far from it. I must fly; Benjy will call me a naughty girl for being so late."
Lucia remembered that the era of plain living had begun. Hashed mutton and treacle pudding. Perhaps Elizabeth might go away if she knew that. On the other hand, Elizabeth had certainly come here at one o'clock in order to be asked to lunch, and it would be wiser to ask her.
"Ring him up and say you're lunching here," she decided. "Do."
Elizabeth recollected that she had ordered hashed beef and marmalade pudding at home.
"I consider that a command, dear Worship," she said. "May I use your telephone?"
All these afflictions strongly reacted on Georgie. Mutton and Mapp and incessant conversation about municipal affairs were making home far less comfortable than he had a right to expect. Then Lucia sprang another conscientious surprise on him, when she returned that afternoon positively invigorated by a long Council meeting.
"I want to consult you, Georgie," she said. "Ever since the Hampshire Argus reported that I played Bridge in Diva's card-room, the whole question has been on my mind. I don't think I ought to play for money."
"You can't call threepence a hundred money," said Georgie.
"It is not a large sum, but emphatically it is money. It's the principle of the thing. A very sad case--all this is very private--has just come to my notice. Young Twistevant, the grocer's son, has been backing horses, and is in debt with his last quarter's rent unpaid. Lately married and a baby coming. All the result of gambling."
"I don't see how the baby is the result of gambling," said Georgie. "Unless he bet he wouldn't have one."
Lucia gave the wintry smile that was reserved for jokes she didn't care about.
"I expressed myself badly," she said. "I only meant that his want of money, when he will need it more than ever, is the result of gambling. The principle is the same whether it's threepence or a starving baby. And Bridge surely, with its call both on prudence and enterprise, is a sufficiently good game to play for love: for love of Bridge. Let us set an example. When we have our next Bridge party, let it be understood that there are no stakes."
"I don't think you'll get many Bridge parties if that's understood," said Georgie. "Everyone will go seven no trumps at once."
"Then they'll be doubled," cried Lucia triumphantly.
"And redoubled. It wouldn't be any fun. Most monotonous. The dealer might as well pick up his hand and say Seven no-trumps, doubled and redoubled, before he looked at it."
"I hope we take a more intelligent interest in the game than that," said Lucia. "The judgment in declaring, the skill in the play of the cards, the various systems so carefully thought out--surely we shan't cease to practise them just because a few pence are no longer at stake? Indeed, I think we shall have far pleasanter games. They will be more tranquil, and on a loftier level. The question of even a few pence sometimes produces acrimony."
"I can't agree," said Georgie. "Those acrimonies are the result of pleasant excitement. And what's the use of keeping the score, and wondering if you dare finesse, if it leads to nothing? You might try playing for twopence a hundred instead of threepence--"
"I must repeat that it's the principle," interrupted Lucia. "I feel that in my position it ought to be known that though I play cards, which I regard as quite a reasonable relaxation, I no longer play for money. I feel sure we should find it just as exciting. Let us put it to the test. I will ask the Padre and Evie to dine and play to-morrow, and we'll see how it goes."
It didn't go. Lucia made the depressing announcement during dinner, and a gloom fell on the party as they cut for partners. For brief bright moments one or other of them forgot that there was nothing to be gained by astuteness except the consciousness of having been clever, but then he (or she) remembered, and the gleam faded. Only Lucia remained keen and critical. She tried with agonised anxiety to recollect if there was another trump in and decided wrong.
"Too stupid of me, Padre," she said. "I ought to have known. I should have drawn it, and then we made our contract. Quite inexcusable. Many apologies."
"Eh, it's no matter; it's no matter whatever," he said. "Just nothing at all."
Then came the adding-up. Georgie had not kept the score and everyone accepted Lucia's addition without a murmur. At half past ten instead of eleven, it was agreed that it was wiser not to begin another rubber, and Georgie saw the languid guests to the door. He came back to find Lucia replaying the last hand.
"You could have got another trick, dear," she said. "Look; you should have discarded instead of trumping. A most interesting manœuvre. As to our test, I think they were both quite as keen as ever, and for myself I never had a more enjoyable game."
The news of this depressing evening spread apace through Tilling, and a small party assembled next day at Diva's for shilling teas and discussions.
"I winna play for nowt," said the Padre. "Such a mirthless evening I never spent. And by no means a well-furnished table at dinner. An unusual parsimony.''
Elizabeth chimed in.
"I got hashed mutton and treacle pudding for lunch a few days ago," she said. "Just what I should have had at home except that it was beef and marmalade."
"Perhaps you happened to look in a few minutes before unexpectedly," suggested Diva who was handing crumpets.
There was a nasty sort of innuendo about this.
"I haven't got any cream, dear," retorted Elizabeth. "Would you kindly--"
"It'll be an eighteen-penny tea then," Diva warned her, "though you'll get potted meat sandwiches as well. Shall it be eighteen-pence?"
Elizabeth ignored the suggestion.
"As for playing bridge for nothing," she resumed, "I won't. I've never played it before, and I'm too old to learn now. Dear Worship, of course, may do as she likes, so long as she doesn't do it with me."
Diva finished her serving and sat down with her customers. Janet brought her cream and potted-meat sandwiches, for of course she could eat what she liked, without choosing between a shilling and an eighteen-penny tea.
"Makes it all so awkward," she said. "If one of us gives a Bridge-party, must the table at which Lucia plays do it for nothing?"
"The other table, too, I expect," said Elizabeth bitterly, watching Diva pouring quantities of cream into her tea. "Worship mightn't like to know that gambling was going on in her presence."
"That I won't submit to," cried Evie. "I won't, I won't. She may be Mayor but she isn't Mussolini."
"I see nought for it," said the Padre, "but not to ask her. I play my Bridge for diversion and it doesna' divert me to exert my mind over the cards and not a bawbee or the loss if it to show for all my trouble."
Other customers came in; the room filled up and Diva had to get busy again. The office boy from the Hampshire Argus and a friend had a good blow-out, and ate an entire pot of jam, which left little profit on their teas. On the other hand, Evie and the Padre and Elizabeth were so concerned about the Bridge crisis that they hardly ate anything. Diva presented them with their bills, and they each gave her a tip of twopence, which was quite decent for a shilling tea, but the office boy and his friend, in the bliss of repletion, gave her threepence. Diva thanked them warmly.
Evie and the Padre continued the subject on the way home.
"Such hard luck on Mr. Georgie," she said. "He's as bored as anybody with playing for love. I saw him yawn six times the other night and he never added up. I think I'll ask him to a Bridge-tea at Diva's, just to see if he'll come without Lucia. Diva would be glad to play with us afterwards, but it would never do to ask her to tea first."
"How's that?" asked the Padre.
"Why she would be making a profit by being our guest. And how could we tip her for four teas, when she had had one of them herself? Very awkward for her."
"A'weel, then let her get her own tea," said the Padre, "though I don't think she's as delicate of feeling as all that. But ask the puir laddie by all means."
Georgie was duly rung up and a slightly embarrassing moment followed. Evie thought she had said with sufficient emphasis "So pleased if you will come to Diva's tomorrow for tea and Bridge," but he asked her to hold on while he saw if Lucia was free. Then Evie had to explain it didn't matter whether Lucia was free or not, and Georgie accepted.
"I felt sure it would happen," he said to himself, "but I think I shan't tell Lucia. Very likely she'll be busy."
Vain was the hope of man. As they were moderately enjoying their frugal lunch next day, Lucia congratulated herself on having a free afternoon.
"Positively nothing to do," she said. "Not a committee to attend, nothing. Let us have one of our good walks, and pop in to have tea with Diva afterwards. I want to encourage her enterprise."
"A walk would be lovely," said Georgie, "but Evie asked me to have tea at Diva's and play a rubber afterwards."
"I don't remember her asking me," said Lucia. "Does she expect me?"
"I rather think Diva's making our fourth," faltered Georgie.
Lucia expressed strong approval.
"A very sensible innovation," she said. "I remember telling you that it struck me as rather bourgeois, rather Victorian, always to have husbands and wives together. No doubt also, dear Evie felt sure I should be busy up till dinner-time. Really very considerate of her, not to give me the pain of refusing. How I shall enjoy a quiet hour with a book."
"She doesn't like it at all the same," thought Georgie, as, rather fatigued with a six mile tramp in a thick sea mist, he tripped down the hill to Diva's, "and I shouldn't wonder if she guessed the reason . . ." The tea-room was crowded, so that Diva could not have had tea with them even if she had been asked. She presented the bill to Evie herself (three eighteenpenny teas) and received the generous tip of fourpence a head.
"Thank you, dear Evie," she said pocketing the extra shilling. "I do call that handsome. I'll join you in the card-room as soon as ever I can."
They had most exciting games at the usual stakes. It was impossible to leave the last rubber unfinished, and Georgie had to hurry over his dressing not to keep Lucia waiting. Her eye had that gimlet-like aspect, which betokened a thirst for knowledge.
"A good tea and a pleasant rubber?" she asked.
"Both," said Georgie. "I enjoyed myself."
"So glad. And many people having tea?"
"Crammed. Diva couldn't join us till close on six."
"How pleasant for Diva. And did you play for stakes, dear, or for nothing?"
"Stakes," said Georgie. "The usual threepence."
"Georgie, I'm going to ask a favour of you," she said. "I want you to set an example--poor young Twistervant, you know--I want it to be widely known that I do not play cards for money. You diminish the force of my example, dear, if you continue to do so. The lime-light is partially, at any rate, on you as well as me. I ask you not to."
"I'm afraid I can't consent," said Georgie. "I don't see any harm in it--Naturally you will do as you like--"
"Thank you, dear," said Lucia.
"No need to thank me. And I shall do as I like."
Grosvenor entered.
"Silentio!" whispered Lucia. "Yes, Grosvenor?"
"Mrs. Mapp-Flint has rung up"--began Grosvenor.
"Tell her I can't attend to any business this evening," said Lucia.
"She doesn't want you to, ma'am. She only wants to know if Mr. Pillson will dine with her the day after tomorrow and play Bridge."
"Thank her," said Georgie firmly. "Delighted."
Card-playing circles in Tilling remained firm: there was no slump. If, in view of her exemplary position, Worship declined to play Bridge for money, far be it from us, said Tilling, to seek to persuade her against the light of conscience. But if Worship imagined that Tilling intended to follow her example, the sooner she got rid of that fond illusion the better. Lucia sent out invitations for another Bridge party at Mallards but everybody was engaged. She could not miss the significance of that, but she put up a proud front and sent for the latest book on Bridge and studied it incessantly, almost to the neglect of her Mayoral Duties, in order to prove that what she cared for was the game in itself. Her grasp of it, she declared, improved out of all knowledge, but she got no opportunities of demonstrating that agreeable fact. Invitations rained on Georgie, for it was clearly unfair that he should get no Bridge because nobody would play with the Mayor, and he returned these hospitalities by asking his friends to have tea with him at Diva's rooms, with a rubber afterwards, for he could not ask three gamblers to dinner and leave Lucia to study Bridge problems by herself, while the rest of the party played. Other entertainers followed his example, for it was far less trouble to order tea at Diva's and find the card-room ready, and as Algernon Wyse expressed it, 'ye olde tea-house' became quite like Almack's. This was good business for the establishment, and Diva bitterly regretted that it had not occurred to her from the first to charge card-money. She put the question one day to Elizabeth.
"All those markers being used up so fast," she said, "and I shall have to get new cards so much oftener than I expected. Twopence, say, for card-money, don't you think?"
"I shouldn't dream of it, dear," said Elizabeth very decidedly. "You must be doing very well as it is. But I should recommend some fresh packs of cards. A little greasy, when last I played. More daintiness, clean cards, sharp pencils and so on are well worth while. But card-money, no!"
The approach of the election to the vacancy on the Town Council diverted the Mayor's mind from her abstract study of Bridge. Up to within a few days of the date on which candidates' names must be sent in, Elizabeth was still the only aspirant. Lucia found herself faced by the prospect of her Mayoress being inevitably elected, and the thought of that filled her with the gloomiest apprehensions. She wondered if Georgie could be induced to stand. It was his morning for cleaning his bibelots, and she went up to his room with offers of help.
"I so often wish, dear," she said pensively, attacking a snuff-box, "that you were more closely connected with me in my municipal work. And such an opportunity offers itself just now."
"Do be careful with that snuff-box," said he. "Don't rub it hard. What's this opportunity?"
"The Town Council. There's a vacancy very soon. I'm convinced, dear, that with a little training, such as I could give you, you would make a marvellous Councillor, and you would find the work most absorbing."
"I think it would bore me stiff," he said. "I'm no good at slums and drains."
Lucia decided to disclose herself.
"Georgie, it's to help me," she said. "Elizabeth at present is the only candidate, and the idea of having her on the Council is intolerable. And with the prestige of your being my husband I don't doubt the result. Just a few days of canvassing; you with your keen interest in human nature will revel in it. It is a duty, it seems to me, that you owe to yourself. You would have an official position in the town. I have long felt it an anomaly that the Mayor's husband had none."
Georgie considered. He had before now thought it would be pleasant to walk in Mayoral processions in a purple gown. And bored though he was with Lucia's municipal gabble, it would be different when, with the weight of his position to back him, he could say that he totally disagreed with her on some matter of policy, and perhaps defeat some project of hers at a Council Meeting. Also, it would be a pleasure to defeat Elizabeth at the poll . . .
"Well, if you'll help me with the canvassing--" he began.
"Ah, if I only could!" she said. "But, dear, my position precludes me from taking any active part. It is analogous to that of the King, who, officially, is outside politics. The fact that you are my husband--what a blessed day was that when our lives were joined--will carry immense weight. Everyone will know that your candidature has my full approval. I shouldn't wonder if Elizabeth withdrew when she learns you are standing against her."
"Oh, very well," said he. "But you must coach me on what my programme is to be."
"Thank you, dear, a thousand times! You must send in your name at once. Mrs. Simpson will get you a form to fill up."
Several horrid days ensued and Georgie wended his dripping way from house to house in the most atrocious weather. His ticket was better housing for the poorer classes, and he called at rows of depressing dwellings, promising to devote his best energies to procuring the tenants bath-rooms, plumbing, bicycle-sheds and open spaces for their children to play in. A disagreeable sense oppressed him that the mothers, whose household jobs he was interrupting, were much bored with his visits, and took very little interest in his protestations. In reward for these distasteful exertions Lucia relaxed the Spartan commissariat--indeed, she disliked it very much herself and occasionally wondered if her example was being either followed or respected--and she gave him Lucullan lunches and dinners. Elizabeth, of course, at once got wind of his candidature and canvassing, but instead of withdrawing, she started a hurricane campaign of her own. Her ticket was the reduction of rates, instead of this rise in them which these idiotic schemes for useless luxuries would inevitably produce.
The result of the election was to be announced by the Mayor from the steps of the Town Hall. Owing to the howling gale, and the torrents of rain the street outside was absolutely empty save for the figure of Major Benjy clad in a sou'wester hat, a mackintosh and waders, crouching in the most sheltered corner he could find beneath a dripping umbrella. Elizabeth had had hard work to induce him to come at all: he professed himself perfectly content to curb his suspense in comfort at home by the fire till she returned with the news, and all the other inhabitants of Tilling felt they could wait till next morning . . . Then Lucia emerged from the Town Hall with a candidate on each side of her, and in a piercing scream, to make her voice heard in this din of the elements, she announced the appalling figures. Mrs. Elizabeth Mapp-Flint, she yelled, had polled eight hundred and five votes, and was therefore elected.
Major Benjy uttered a hoarse "Hurrah!" and trying to clap his hands let go of his umbrella which soared into the gale and was seen no more. . . . Mr. George Pillson, screamed Lucia, had polled four hundred and twenty-one votes. Elizabeth, at the top of her voice, then warmly thanked the burgesses of Tilling for the confidence which they had placed in her, and which she would do her best to deserve. She shook hands with the Mayor and the defeated candidate, and instantly drove away with her husband. As there were no other burgesses to address Georgie did not deliver the speech which he had prepared: indeed it would have been quite unsuitable, since he had intended to thank the burgesses of Tilling in similar terms. He and Lucia scurried to their car, and Georgie put up the window.
"Most mortifying," he said.
"My dear, you did your best," said Lucia, pressing his arm with a wet but sympathetic hand. "In public life, one has to take these little reverses--"
"Most humiliating," interrupted Georgie. "All that trouble thrown away. Being triumphed over by Elizabeth when you led me to expect quite the opposite. She'll be far more swanky now than if I hadn't put up."
"No, Georgie, there I can't agree," said Lucia. "If there had been no other candidate, she would have said that nobody felt he had the slightest chance against her. That would have been much worse. Anyhow she knows now that four hundred and--what was the figure?"
"Four hundred and twenty-one," said Georgie.
"Yes, four hundred and twenty-one thoughtful voters in Tilling--"
"--against eight hundred and five thoughtless ones," said Georgie. "Don't let's talk any more about it. It's a loss of prestige for both of us. No getting out of it."
Lucia hurried indoors to tell Grosvenor to bring up a bottle of champagne for dinner, and to put on to the fire the pretty wreath of laurel leaves which she had privily stitched together for the coronation of her new Town Councillor.
"What's that nasty smell of burning evergreen?" asked Georgie morosely, as they went into the dining-room.
In the opinion of friends the loss of prestige had been entirely Lucia's. Georgie would never have stood for the Council unless she had urged him, and it was a nasty defeat which, it was hoped, might do the Mayor good. But the Mayoress's victory, it was feared, would have the worst effect on her character. She and Diva met next morning in the pouring rain to do their shopping.
"Very disagreeable for poor Worship," said Elizabeth, "and not very friendly to me to put up another candidate--"
"Rubbish," said Diva. "She's made you Mayoress. Quite enough friendliness for one year, I should have thought."
"And it was out of friendliness that I accepted. I wanted to be of use to her, and stood for the Council for the same reason--"
"Only she thought Mr. Georgie would be of more use than you," interrupted Diva.
"Somebody in her pocket--Take care, Diva. Susan's van."
The Royce drew up close to them, and Susan's face loomed in the window.
"Good morning, Elizabeth," she said. "I've just heard--"
"Thanks, dear, for your congratulations," said Elizabeth. "But quite a walk-over."
Susan's face shewed no sign of comprehension.
"What did you walk over?" she asked. "In this rain, too?--Oh, the election to the Town Council. How nice for you! When are you going to reduce the rates?"
A shrill whistle, and Irene's huge red umbrella joined the group.
"Hullo, Mapp!" she said. "So you've got on the map again. Ha, ha! How dare you stand against Georgie when my Angel wanted him to get in?"
Irene's awful tongue always deflated Elizabeth.
"Dear quaint one!" she said. "What a lovely umbrella."
"I know that. But how dare you?"
Elizabeth was stung into sarcasm.
"Well, we don't all of us think that your Angel must always have her way, dear," she replied, "and that we must lie down flat for her to trample us into the mire."
"But she raised you out of the mire, woman," cried Irene, "when she made you Mayoress. She took pity on your fruitless efforts to become somebody. Wait till you see my fresco."
Elizabeth was sorry she had been so courageous!
"Painting a pretty fresco, dear?" she asked. "How I shall look forward to seeing it!"
"It may be a disappointment to you," said Irene. "Do you remember posing for me on the day Lucia made you Mayoress? It came out in the Hampshire Argus. Well, it's going to come out again in my fresco. Standing on an oyster shell with Benjy blowing you along. Wait and see."
This was no brawl for an M.B.E. to be mixed up in, and Susan called "Home!" to her chauffeur, and shut the window. Even Diva thought she had better move on.
"Bye-bye," she said. "Must get back to my baking."
Elizabeth turned on her with a frightful grin.
"Very wise," she said. "If you had got back earlier to your baking yesterday, we should have enjoyed your jam-puffs more."
"That's too much!" cried Diva. "You ate three."
"And bitterly repented it," said Elizabeth.
Irene hooted with laughter and went on down the street. Diva crossed it, and Elizabeth stayed where she was for a moment to recover her poise. Why did Irene always cause her to feel like a rabbit with a stoat in pursuit? She bewildered and disintegrated her; she drained her of all power of invective and retort. She could face Diva, and had just done so with signal success, but she was no good against Irene. She plodded home through the driving rain, menaced by the thought of that snap-shot being revived again in fresco.
To be continued
