TROUBLE FOR LUCIA
PART 5
CHAPTER V
Nobody was more conscious of this loss of prestige than Lucia herself, and there were losses in other directions as well. She had hoped that her renunciation of gambling would have induced card-playing circles to follow her example. That hope was frustrated; bridge-parties with the usual stakes were as numerous as ever, but she was not asked to them. Another worry was that the humiliating election rankled in Georgie's mind and her seeking his advice on municipal questions, which was intended to show him how much she relied on his judgment, left him unflattered. When they sat after dinner in the garden-room (where, alas, no eager gamblers now found the hours pass only too quickly) her lucid exposition of some administrative point failed to rouse any real enthusiasm in him.
"And if everything isn't quite clear," she said, "mind you interrupt me, and I'll go over it again."
But no interruption ever came; occasionally she thought she observed that slight elongation of the face that betokens a suppressed yawn, and at the end, as likely as not, he made some comment which shewed he had not listened to a word she was saying. To-night, she was not sorry he asked no questions about the contentious conduct of the catchment board, as she was not very clear about it herself. She became less municipal.
"How these subjects get between one and the lighter side of life!" she said. "Any news to-day?"
"Only that turn-up between Diva and Elizabeth," he said.
"Georgie, you never told me! What about?"
"I began to tell you at dinner," said Georgie, "only you changed the subject to the water-rate. It started with jam-puffs. Elizabeth ate three one afternoon at Diva's, and said next morning that she bitterly repented it. Diva says she'll never serve her a tea again, until she apologizes, but I don't suppose she means it."
"Tell me more!" said Lucia, feeling the old familiar glamour stealing over her. "And how is her tea-shop getting on?"
"Flourishing. The most popular house in Tilling. All so pleasant and chatty, and a rubber after tea on most days. Quite a centre."
Lucia wrestled with herself for an intense moment.
"There's a point on which I much want your advice," she began.
"Do you know, I don't think I can hope to understand any more municipal affairs to-night," said Georgie firmly.
"It's not that sort, dear," she said, wondering how to express herself in a lofty manner. "It is this: You know how I refused to play Bridge any more for money. I've been thinking deeply over that decision. Deeply. It was meant to set an example, but if nobody follows an example, Georgie, one has to consider the wisdom of continuing to set it."
"I always thought you'd soon find it very tar'some not to get your Bridge," said Georgie. "You used to enjoy it so."
"Ah, it's not that," said Lucia, speaking in her best Oxford voice. "I would willingly never see a card again if that was all, and indeed the abstract study of the game interests me far more. But I did find a certain value in our little Bridge-parties quite apart from cards. Very suggestive discussions, sometimes about local affairs, and now more than ever it is so important for me to be in touch with the social as well as the municipal atmosphere of the place. I regret that others have not followed my example, for I am sure our games would have been as thrilling as ever, but if others won't come into line with me, I will gladly step back into the ranks again. Nobody shall be able to say of me that I caused splits and dissensions. 'One and all', as you know, is my favourite motto."
Georgie didn't know anything of the sort, but he let it pass.
"Capital!" he said. "Everybody will be very glad."
"And it would give me great pleasure to reconcile that childish quarrel between Diva and Elizabeth," continued Lucia. "I'll ask Elizabeth and Benjy to have tea with us there to-morrow; dear Diva will not refuse to serve a guest of mine, and their little disagreement will be smoothed over. A rubber afterwards."
Georgie looked doubtful.
"Perhaps you had better tell them that you will play for the usual stakes," he said. "Else they might say they were engaged again."
Lucia, with her vivid imagination, visualised the horrid superior grin which, at the other end of the telephone, would spread over Elizabeth's face, when she heard that, and felt that she would scarcely be able to get the words out. But she steeled herself and went to the telephone.
Elizabeth and Benjy accepted, and, after a reconciliatory eighteen-penny tea, at which Elizabeth ate jam puffs with gusto ("Dear Diva, what delicious, light pastry," she said. "I wonder it doesn't fly away") the four retired into the card-room. As if to welcome Lucia back into gambling circles, the God of Chance provided most exciting games. There were slams declared and won, there was doubling and redoubling and rewards and vengeances. Suddenly Diva looked in with a teapot in her hand and a most anxious expression on her face. She closed the door.
"The Inspector of Police wants to see you, Lucia," she whispered.
Lucia rose, white to the lips. In a flash there came back to her all her misgivings about the legality of Diva's permitting gambling in a public room, and now the police were raiding it. She pictured headlines in the Hampshire Argus and lurid paragraphs. . . . Raid on Mrs. Godiva Plaistow's gaming rooms . . . The list of the gamblers caught there. The Mayor and Mayoress of Tilling . . . A retired Major. The Mayor's husband. The case brought before the Tilling magistrates with the Mayor in the dock instead of on the Bench. Exemplary fines. Her own resignation. Eternal infamy. . . .
"Did he ask for me personally?" said Lucia.
"Yes. Knew that you were here," wailed Diva. "And my tea-shop will be closed. Oh, dear me, if I'd only heeded your warning about raids! Or if we'd only joined you in playing Bridge for nothing!"
Lucia rose to the topmost peak of magnanimity, and refrained from rubbing that in.
"Is there a back way out, Diva?" she asked. "Then they could all go. I shall remain and receive my Inspector here. Just sitting here. Quietly."
"But there's no back way out," said Diva. "And you can't get out of the window. Too small."
"Hide the cards!" commanded Lucia, and they all snatched up their hands. Georgie put his in his breast-pocket. Benjy put his on the top of the large cupboard. Elizabeth sat on hers. Lucia thrust hers up the sleeve of her jacket.
"Ask him to come in," she said. "Now all talk!"
The door opened, and the Inspector stood majestically there with a blue paper in his hand.
"Indeed, as you say, Major Mapp-Flint," said Lucia in an unwavering Oxford voice, "the League of Nations has collapsed like a card-house--I should say a ruin--Yes, Inspector, did you want me?"
"Yes, your Worship. I called at Mallards, and was told I should catch you here. There's a summons that needs your signature. I hope your Worship will excuse my coming, but it's urgent."
"Quite right, Inspector," said Lucia. "I am always ready to be interrupted on magisterial business. I see. On the dotted line. Lend me your fountain-pen, Georgie."
As she held out her hand for it, all her cards tumbled out of her sleeve. A draught eddied through the open door and Benjy's cache on the cupboard fluttered into the air. Elizabeth jumped up to gather them, and the cards on which she was sitting fell on to the floor.
Lucia signed with a slightly unsteady hand, and gave the summons back to the Inspector.
"Thank you, your Worship," he said. "Very sorry to interrupt your game, ma'am."
"Not at all," said Lucia. "You were only doing your duty."
He bowed and left the room.
"I must apologise to you all," said Lucia without a moment's pause, "but my good Inspector has orders to ask for me whenever he wants to see me on any urgent matter. Dear me! All my cards exposed on the table and Elizabeth's and Major Benjy's on the floor. I am afraid we must have a fresh deal."
Nobody made any allusion to the late panic, and Lucia dealt again.
Diva looked in again soon, carrying a box of chocolates.
"Any more Inspectors, dear?" asked Elizabeth acidly. "Any more raids? Your nerves seem rather jumpy."
Diva was sorely tempted to retort that their nerves seemed pretty jumpy too, but it was bad for business to be sharp with patrons.
"No, and I'm giving him such a nice tea," she said meekly. "But it was a relief, wasn't it? A box of chocolates for you. Very good ones."
The rubber came to an end, with everybody eating chocolates, and a surcharged chat on local topics succeeded. It almost intoxicated Lucia, who, now for weeks, had not partaken of that heady beverage, and she felt more than ever like Catherine the Great.
"A very recreative two hours," she said to Georgie as they went up the hill homewards, "though I still maintain that our game would have been just as exciting without playing for money. And that farcical interlude of my Inspector! Georgie, I don't mind confessing that just for one brief moment it did occur to me that he was raiding the premises--"
"Oh, I know that," said Georgie. "Why, you asked Diva if there wasn't a back way out, and told us to hide our cards and talk. I was the only one of us who knew how absurd it all was."
"But how you bundled your cards into your pocket! We were all a little alarmed. All. I put it down to Diva's terror-stricken entrance with her teapot dribbling at the spout--"
"No! I didn't see that," said Georgie.
"Quite a pool on the ground. And her lamentable outcry about her tea-rooms being closed. It was suggestion, dear. Very sensitive people like myself respond automatically to suggestion . . . And most interesting about Susan and her automatic script. She thinks, Elizabeth tells me, that Blue Birdie controls her when she's in trance, and is entirely wrapped up in it."
"She's hardly ever seen now," said Georgie. "She never plays Bridge, nor comes to Diva's for tea, and Algernon usually does her marketing."
"I must really go to one of her séances, if I can find a free hour some time," said Lucia. "But my visit must be quite private. It would never do if it was known that the Mayor attended séances which do seem alien [ed.--akin?] to necromancy. Necromancy, as you may know, is divining through the medium of a corpse."
"But that's a human corpse, isn't it?" asked he.
"I don't think you can make a distinction--Oh! Take care!"
She pulled Georgie back, just as he was stepping on to the road from the pavement. A boy on a bicycle, riding without lights, flew down the hill, narrowly missing him.
"Most dangerous!" said Lucia. "No lights and excessive speed. I must ring up my Inspector and report that boy--I wonder who he was."
"I don't see how you can report him unless you know," suggested Georgie.
Lucia disregarded such irrelevancy. Her eyes followed the boy as he curved recklessly round the sharp corner into the High Street.
"Really I feel more envious than indignant," she said. "It must be so exhilarating. Such speed! What Lawrence of Arabia always loved. I feel very much inclined to learn bicycling. Those smart ladies of the nineties use to find it very amusing. Bicycling-breakfasts in Battersea Park and all that. Our brisk walks, whenever I have time to take them, are so limited: in these short afternoons we can hardly get out into the country before it is time to turn again."
The idea appealed to Georgie, especially when Lucia embellished it with mysterious and conspiratorial additions. No one must know that they were learning until they were accomplished enough to appear in the High Street in complete control of their machines. What a sensation that would cause! What envious admiration! So next day they motored out to a lonely stretch of road a few miles away, where a man from the bicycle-shop, riding a man's bicycle and guiding a woman's, had a clandestine assignation with them. He held Georgie on, while Chapman, Lucia's chauffeur, clung to her, and for the next few afternoons they wobbled about the road with incalculable swoopings. Lucia was far the quicker of the two in acquiring the precarious balance, and she talked all the time to Chapman.
"I'm beginning to feel quite secure,'' she said. "You might let go for one second. No: there's a cart coming. Better wait till it has passed. Where's Mr. Georgie? Far behind, I suppose."
"Yes, ma'am. Ever so far."
"Oh, what a jolt!" she cried, as her front wheel went over a loose stone. "Enough to unseat anybody. I put on the brake, don't I?"
After ringing the bell once or twice, Lucia found the brake. The bicycle stopped dead, and she stepped lightly off.
"So powerful," she said remounting. "Now both hands off for a moment, Chapman."
The day came when Georgie's attendant still hovered close to him, but when Lucia outpaced Chapman altogether. A little way in front of her a man near the edge of the road, with a saucepan of tar bubbling over a pot of red-hot coals, was doctoring a telegraph post. Then something curious happened to the co-ordination between Lucia's brain and muscles. The imperative need of avoiding the fire-pot seemed to impel her to make a bee-line for it. With her eyes firmly fixed on it, she felt in vain for that powerful brake, and rode straight into the fire-pot, upsetting the tar and scattering the coals.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said to the operator. "I'm rather new at it. Would half-a-crown? And then would you kindly hold my bicycle while I mount again?"
The road was quite empty after that, and Lucia sped prosperously along, wobbling occasionally for no reason, but rejoicing in the comparative swiftness. Then it was time to turn. This was impossible without dismounting, but she mounted again without much difficulty, and there was a lovely view of Tilling rising red-roofed above the level land. Telegraph post after telegraph post flitted past her, and then she caught sight of the man with the fire-pot again. Lucia felt that he was observing her, and once more something curious occurred to her co-ordinations, and with it the familiar sense of exactly the same situation having happened before. Her machine began to swoop about the road; she steadied it, and with the utmost precision went straight into the fire-pot again.
"You seem to make a practice of it," remarked the operator severely.
"Too awkward of me," said Lucia. "It was the very last thing I wanted to do. Quite the last."
"That'll be another half-crown," said the victim, "and now I come to look at you, it was you and your pals cocked up on the Bench, who fined me five bob last month, for not being half as unsteady as you."
"Indeed! How small the world is," said Lucia with great dignity and aloofness, taking out her purse. Indeed it was a strange coincidence that she should have disbursed to the culprit of last month exactly the sum that she had fined him for drunkenness. She thought there was something rather psychic about it, but she could not tell Georgie, for that would have disclosed to him that in the course of her daring, unaccompanied ride she had twice upset a fire-pot and scattered tar and red hot coals on the highway. Soon she met him still outward bound and he, too, was riding unsupported.
"I've made such strides to-day," he called out. "How have you got on?"
"Beautifully! Miles!" said Lucia, as they passed each other. "But we must be getting back. Let me see you turn, dear, without dismounting. Not so difficult."
The very notion of attempting that made Georgie unsteady, and he got off.
"I don't believe she can do it herself," he muttered, as he turned his machine and followed her. The motor was waiting for them, and just as she was getting in, he observed a blob of tar on one of her shoes. She wiped it off on the grass by the side of the road.
Susan had invited them both to a necromantic séance after tea that evening. She explained that she would not ask them to tea, because before these sittings she fasted and meditated in the dark for an hour. When they got home from their ride, Georgie went to his sitting-room to rest, but Lucia, fresh as a daisy, filled up time by studying a sort of catechism from the Board of the Southern Railway in answer to her suggestion of starting a Royal Fish Express with a refrigerating van to supply the Court. They did not seem very enthusiastic; they put a quantity of queries. Had Her Worship received a Royal command on the subject? Did she propose to run the R.F.E. to Balmoral when the Court was in Scotland, because there were Scotch fishing ports a little closer? Had she worked out the cost of a refrigerating van? Was the supply of fish at Tilling sufficient to furnish the Royal Table as well as the normal requirements of the district? Did her Worship--
Grosvenor entered. Mr. Wyse had called, and would much like, if quite convenient, to have a few words with Lucia before the séance. That seemed a more urgent call, for all these fish questions required a great deal of thought, and must be gone into with Mrs. Simpson next morning, and she told Grosvenor that she could give him ten minutes. He entered, carrying a small parcel wrapped up in brown paper.
"So good of you to receive me," he said. "I am aware of the value of your time. A matter of considerable delicacy. My dear Susan tells me that you and your husband have graciously promised to attend her séance to-day."
Lucia referred to her engagement book.
"Quite correct," she said. "I found I could just fit it in. Five-thirty p.m. is my entry."
"I will speak but briefly of the ritual of these séances," said Mr. Wyse. "My Susan sits at the table in our little dining-room, which you have, alas too rarely, honoured by your presence on what I may call less moribund occasions. It is furnished with a copious supply of scribbling paper and of sharpened pencils for her automatic script. In front of her is a small shrine, I may term it, of ebony--possibly ebonite--with white satin curtains concealing what is within. At the commencement of the séance, the lights are put out, and my Susan draws the curtains aside. Within are the mortal remains--or such as could be hygienically preserved--of her budgerigar. She used to wear them in her hat or as a decoration for the bosom. They once fell into a dish, a red dish, at your hospitable table."
"I remember. Raspberry something," said Lucia.
"I bow to your superior knowledge," said Mr. Wyse. "Then Susan goes into a species of trance, and these communications through automatic script begin. Very voluminous sometimes, and difficult to decipher. She spends the greater part of the day in puzzling them out, not always successfully. Now, adorabile Signora--"
"Oh, Mr. Wyse," cried Lucia, slightly startled.
"Dear lady, I only meant Your Worship," he explained.
"I see. Stupid of me," she said. "Yes?"
"I appeal to you," continued he. "To put the matter in a nutshell, I fear my dear Susan will get unhinged, if this goes on. Already she is sadly changed. Her strong commonsense, her keen appreciation of the comforts and interests of life, her fur-coat, her Royce, her shopping, her Bridge; all these are tasteless to her. Nothing exists for her except these communings."
"But how can I help you?" asked Lucia . . .
Mr. Wyse tapped the brown paper parcel.
"I have brought here," he said, "the source of all our trouble: Blue Birdie. I abstracted it from the shrine while my dear Susan was meditating in the drawing-room. I want it to disappear in the hope that when she discovers it has gone, she will have to give up the séances, and recover her balance. I would not destroy it: that would be going too far. Would you therefore, dear lady, harbour the Object in some place unknown to me, so that when Susan asks me, as she undoubtedly will, if I know where it is, I may be able to tell her that I do not? A shade jesuitical perhaps, but such jesuitry, I feel, is justifiable."
Lucia considered this. "I think it is, too," she said. "I will put it somewhere safe. Anything to prevent our Susan becoming unhinged. That must never happen. By the way, is there a slight odour?"
"A reliable and harmless disinfectant," said Mr. Wyse. "There was a faint smell in the neighbourhood of the shrine which I put down to imperfect taxidermy. A thousand thanks, Worshipful Lady. One cannot tell what my Susan's reactions may be, but I trust that the disappearance of the Object may lead to a discontinuance of the séances. In fact, I do not see how they could be held without it."
Lucia had ordered a stack of black japanned boxes to hold documents connected with municipal departments. The arms of the Borough and her name were painted on them, with the subject with which they were concerned. There were several empty ones, and when Mr. Wyse had bowed himself out, she put Blue Birdie into the one labelled "Museum," which seemed appropriate. "Burial Board" would have been appropriate, too, but there was already an agenda-paper in that.
Presently she and Georgie set forth for Starling Cottage.
Susan and Algernon were ready for them in the dining-room. The shrine with drawn curtains was on the table. Susan had heated a shovel and was burning incense on it.
"Blue Birdie came from the Spice Islands," she explained, waving the shovel in front of the shrine. "Yesterday my hand wrote 'sweet gums' as far as I could read it, over and over again, and I think that's what he meant. And I've put up a picture of St. Francis preaching to the birds."
Certainly Susan, as her husband had said, was much changed. She looked dotty. There was an ecstatic light in her eye, and a demented psychical smile on her mouth. She wore a wreath in her hair, a loose white gown, and reminded Lucia of an immense operatic Ophelia. But critical circumstances always developed Lucia's efficiency, and she nodded encouragingly to Algernon as Susan swept fragrantly about the room.
"So good of you to let us come, dear Susan," she said. "I have very great experience in psychical phenomena: adepts--do you remember the Guru at Riseholme, Georgie?--adepts always tell me that I should be a marvellous medium if I had time to devote myself to the occult."
Susan held up her hand.
"Hush," she whispered. "Surely I heard 'Tweet, Tweet', which means Blue Birdie is here. Good afternoon, darling."
She put the fire-shovel into the fender.
"Very promising," she said. "Blue Birdie doesn't usually make himself heard so soon, and it always means I'm going into trance. It must be you, Lucia, who have contributed to the psychic force."
"Very likely," said Lucia, "the Guru always said I had immense power."
"Turn out the lights then, Algernon, all but the little ruby lamp by my paper, and I will undraw the curtains of the shrine. Tweet, Tweet! There it is again, and that lost feeling is coming over me."
Lucia had been thinking desperately, while Ophelia got ready, with that intense concentration which, so often before, had smoothed out the most crumpled situations. She gave a silvery laugh.
"I heard it, I heard it," she exclaimed to Algernon's great surprise. "Buona sera, Blue Birdie. Have you come to see Mummie and Auntie Lucia from Spicy Islands? . . . Oh, I'm sure I felt a little brush of soft feathers on my cheek."
"No! did you really?" asked Susan with the slightest touch of jealousy in her voice. "My pencil, Algernon."
Lucia gave a swift glance at the shrine, as Susan drew the curtains, and was satisfied that the most spiritually enlightened eye could not see that it was empty. But dark though the room was, it was as if fresh candles were being profusely lit in her brain, as on some High Altar dedicated to Ingenuity. She kept her eyes fixed on Susan's hand poised over her paper. It was recording very little: an occasional dot or dash was all the inspiration Blue Birdie could give. For herself, she exclaimed now and then that she felt in the dark the brush of the bird's wing, or heard that pretty note. Each time she saw that the pencil paused. Then the last and the greatest candle was lit in her imagination, and she waited calm and composed for the conclusion of the séance, when Susan would see that the shrine was empty.
They sat in the dim ruby light for half an hour, and Susan, as if not quite lost, gave an annoyed exclamation.
"Very disappointing," she said. "Turn on the light, Algernon. Blue Birdie began so well and now nothing is coming through."
Before he could get to the switch, Lucia, with a great gasp of excitement, fell back in her chair, and covered her eyes with her hands.
"Something wonderful has happened," she chanted. "Blue Birdie has left us altogether. What a manifestation!"
Still not even peeping, she heard Susan's voice rise to a scream.
"But the shrine's empty!" she cried. "Where is Blue Birdie, Algernon?"
"I have no idea," said the Jesuit. "What has happened?"
Lucia still sat with covered eyes.
"Did I not tell you before the light was turned on that there had been a great manifestation?" she asked. "I knew the shrine would be empty! Let me look for myself."
"Not a feather!" she said. "The dematerialization is complete. Oh, what would not the President of the Psychical Research have given to be present! Only a few minutes ago, Susan and I--did we not, Susan?--heard his little salutation, and I, at any rate, felt his feathers brush my cheek. Now no trace! Never, in all my experience, have I seen anything so perfect."
"But what does it mean?" asked the distraught Susan, pulling the wreath from her dishevelled hair. Lucia waved her hands in a mystical movement.
"Dear Susan," she said, beginning to gabble, "Listen! All these weeks your darling's spirit has been manifesting itself to you, and to me also to-night, with its pretty chirps and strokes of the wing, in order to convince you of its presence, earth-bound and attached to its mortal remains. Now on the astral plane Blue Birdie has been able so to flood them with spiritual reality that they have been dissolved, translated--ah, how badly I put it--into spirit. Blue Birdie has been helping you all these weeks to realise that all is spirit. Now you have this final, supreme demonstration. Rapt with all of him that was mortal into a higher sphere!"
"But won't he ever come back?" asked Susan.
"Ah, you would not be so selfish as to wish that!" said Lucia. "He is free; he is earth-bound no longer, and, by this miracle of dematerialization, has given you proof of that. Let me see what his last earthly communication with you was."
Lucia picked up the sheet on which Susan had automatically recorded a few undecipherable scribbles.
"I knew it!" she cried. "See, there is nothing but those few scrawled lines. Your sweet bird's spirit was losing connection with the material sphere; he was rising above it. How it all hangs together!"
"I shall miss him dreadfully," said Susan in a faltering voice.
"But you mustn't, you mustn't. You cannot grudge him his freedom. And, oh, what a privilege to have assisted at such a demonstration! Ennobling! And if my small powers added to yours, dear, helped toward such a beautiful result, why that is more than a privilege."
Georgie felt sure that there was hocus-pocus somewhere, and that Lucia had had a hand in it, but his probings, as they walked away, only elicited from her idiotic replies such as "Too marvellous! What a privilege!"
It soon became known in marketing circles next morning that very remarkable necromancy had occurred at Starling Cottage, that Blue Birdie had fluttered about the darkened room, uttering his sharp cries, and had several times brushed against the cheek of the Mayor. Then, wonder of wonders, his mortal remains had vanished. Mr. Wyse walked up and down the High Street, never varying his account of the phenomena, but unable to explain them, and for the first time for some days Susan appeared in her Royce, but without any cockade in her hat.
There was something mysterious and incredible about it all, but it did not usurp the entire attention of Tilling, for why did Elizabeth, from whom violent sarcasm might have been expected, seem to shun conversation? She stole rapidly from shop to shop, and, when cornered by Diva, coming out of the butcher's, she explained, scarcely opening her lips at all, that she had a relaxed throat, and must only breathe through her nose.
"I should open my mouth wide," said Diva severely, "and have a good gargle," but Elizabeth only shook her head with an odd smile, and passed on. "Looks a bit hollow-cheeked, too," thought Diva. By contrast, Lucia was far from hollow-cheeked; she had a swollen face, and made no secret of her appointment with the dentist to have "it" out. From there she went home, with the expectation of receiving, later in the day, a denture comprising a few molars with a fresh attachment added.
She ate her lunch, in the fashion of a rabbit, with her front teeth.
"Such a skilful extraction, Georgie," she said, "but a little sore."
As she had a Council meeting that afternoon, Georgie went off alone in the motor for his assignation with the boy from the bicycle shop. The séance last evening still puzzled him, but he felt more certain than ever that her exclamations that she heard chirpings and felt the brush of Birdie's wing were absolute rubbish; so, too, was her gabble that her psychic powers added to Susan's, had brought about the dematerialization. "All bosh," he said aloud in an annoyed voice, "and it only confirms her complicity. It's very unkind of her not to tell me how she faked it, when she knows how I would enjoy it."
His bicycle was ready for him; he mounted without the slightest difficulty, and the boy was soon left far behind. Then with secret trepidation he observed not far ahead a man with a saucepan of tar simmering over a fire-pot. As he got close, he was aware of a silly feeling in his head that it was exercising a sort of fascination over his machine, but by keeping his eye on the road he got safely by it, though with frightful wobbles, and dismounted for a short rest.
"Well, that's a disappointment," observed the operator. "You ain't a patch on the lady who knocked down my fire-pot twice yesterday."
Suddenly Georgie remembered the dab of tar on Lucia's shoe, and illumination flooded his brain.
"No! Did she indeed?" he said with great interest. "The same lady twice? That was bad riding!"
"Oh, something shocking. Not that I'd ever seek to hinder her, for she gave me half-a-crown per upset. Ain't she coming today?"
As he rode home Georgie again meditated on Lucia's secretiveness. Why could she not tell him about her jugglings at the séance yesterday and about her antics with the fire-pot? Even to him she had to keep up this incessant flow of triumphant achievement both in occult matters and in riding a bicycle. Now that they were man and wife she ought to be more open with him. "But I'll tickle her up about the fire-pot," he thought vindictively.
When he got home he found Lucia just returned from a most satisfactory Council meeting.
"We got through our business most expeditiously," she said, "for Elizabeth was absent, and so there were fewer irrelevant interruptions. I wonder what ailed her: nothing serious I hope. She was rather odd in the High Street this morning. No smiles: she scarcely opened her mouth when I spoke to her. And did you make good progress on your bicycle this afternoon?"
"Admirable," said he. "Perfect steering. There was a man with a fire-pot tarring a telegraph-post--"
"Ah, yes," interrupted Lucia. "Tar keeps off insects that burrow into the wood. Let us go and have tea."
"--and an odd feeling came over me," he continued firmly, "that just because I must avoid it, I should very likely run into it. Have you ever felt that? I suppose not."
"Yes, indeed I have in my earlier stages," said Lucia cordially. "But I can give you an absolute cure for it. Fix your eyes straight ahead, and you'll have no bother at all."
"So I found. The man was a chatty sort of fellow. He told me that some learner on a bicycle had knocked over the pot twice yesterday. Can you imagine such awkwardness? I am pleased to have got past that stage."
Lucia did not show by the wink of an eyelid that this arrow had pierced her, and Georgie, in spite of his exasperation, could not help admiring such nerve.
"Capital!" she said. "I expect you've quite caught me up by your practice to-day. Now after my Council meeting I think I must relax. A little music, dear?"
A melodious half-hour followed. They were both familiar with Beethoven's famous Fifth Symphony, as arranged for four hands on the piano, and played it with ravishing sensibility.
"Caro, how it takes one out of all petty carpings and schemings!" said Lucia at the end. "How all our smallnesses are swallowed up in that broad cosmic splendour! And how beautifully you played, dear. Inspired! I almost stopped in order to listen to you."
Georgie writhed under these compliments: he could hardly switch back to dark hints about séances and fire-pots after them. In strong rebellion against his kindlier feelings towards her, he made himself comfortable by the fire, while Lucia again tackled the catechism imposed on her by the Directors of the Southern Railway. Fatigued by his bicycle-ride, Georgie fell into a pleasant slumber.
Presently Grosvenor entered, carrying a small packet, neatly wrapped up and sealed. Lucia put her finger to her lip with a glance at her sleeping husband, and Grosvenor withdrew in tiptoe silence. Lucia knew what this packet must contain; she could slip the reconstituted denture into her mouth in a moment, and there would be no more rabbit-nibbling at dinner. She opened the packet and took out of the cotton-wool wrapping what it contained.
It was impossible to suppress a shrill exclamation, and Georgie awoke with a start. Beneath the light of Lucia's reading-lamp there gleamed in her hand something dazzling, something familiar.
"My dear, what have you got?" he cried. "Why, it's Elizabeth's front teeth! It's Elizabeth's widest smile without any of her face! But how? Why? Blue Birdie's nothing to this."
Lucia made haste to wrap up the smile again.
"Of course it is," she said. "I knew it was familiar, and the moment you said 'smile' I recognised it. That explains Elizabeth's shut mouth this morning. An accident to her smile, and now by some extraordinary mistake the dentist has sent it back to me. Me of all people! What are we to do?"
"Send it back to Elizabeth," suggested Georgie, "with a polite note saying it was addressed to you, and that you opened it. Serve her right, the deceitful woman! How often has she said that she never had any bother with her teeth, and hadn't been to a dentist since she was a child, and didn't know what toothache meant. No wonder; that kind doesn't ache."
"Yes, that would serve her right--" began Lucia.
She paused. She began to think intensely. If Elizabeth's entire smile had been sent to her, where, except to Elizabeth, had her own more withdrawn aids to mastication been sent? Elizabeth could not possibly identify those four hinterland molars, unless she had been preternaturally observant, but the inference would be obvious if Lucia personally sent her back her smile.
"No, Georgie; that wouldn't be kind," she said. "Poor Elizabeth would never dare to smile at me again, if she knew I knew. I don't deny she richly deserves it for telling all those lies, but it would be an unworthy action. It is by a pure accident that we know, and we must not use it against her. I shall instantly send this box back to the dentist's."
"But how do you know who her dentist is?" asked Georgie.
"Mr. Fergus," said Lucia, "who took my tooth so beautifully this morning; there was his card with the packet. I shall merely say that I am utterly at a loss to understand why this has been sent me, and not knowing what the intended destination was, I return it."
Grosvenor entered again. She bore a sealed packet precisely similar to that which now again contained Elizabeth's smile.
"With a note, ma'am," she said. "And the boy is waiting for a packet left here by mistake."
"Oh, do open it," said Georgie gaily. "Somebody else's teeth, I expect. I wonder if we shall recognise them. Quite a new game, and most exciting."
Hardly were the words out of his mouth when he perceived what must have happened. How on earth could Lucia get out of such an awkward situation? But it took far more than that to disconcert the Mayor of Tilling. She gave Grosvenor the other packet.
"A sample or two of tea that I was expecting," she said in her most casual voice. "Yes, from Twistevant's." And she put the sample into a drawer of her table.
Who could fail to admire, thought Georgie, this brazen composure?
To be continued
